Game Design 2D Game
December 5, 2024 2025-11-14 8:35Game Design 2D Game
By Zayden Orenstein
Since November 11, 2024, students in Game Design, a third-year IT class, have been working on a 2D game. In three-person groups, students chose a genre (possibilities include platformer, action/adventure, maze, and more).
Each member of the group was assigned a specific role. Level Designers are responsible for designing the world and turning sprite art into a cohesive level; they also decide the layout and mood of the level and use music and other aspects of environmental design to further demonstrate the latter. Programming Directors actually write the code in Unity (the game design program used in Game Design), including user input, colliders, and other aspects. Finally, Asset Creators make sprites for players, enemies, and more, as well as create the title screen, win screen, and lose screen.
[Caption]: Level designer concept art.
On November 5th, students filled out a survey reflecting their group, role, and game genre preferences. By November 13th, groups had created a pitch draft, which was then refined and resubmitted for a major grade on November 19th. After that draft, students began to complete the tasks assigned to their roles. Programming Designers learned the basics of programming for their selected genre (for instance, a platformer like Super Mario would require them to program jumping and collisions into their game), Asset Creators drew or imported sprite art for the players, enemies, and more, and Level Designers learned how to tilemap, placing reuseable square sprites to create a cohesive level (see image below).
[Caption]: Level designer tilemap sprite art. Each 16×16 pixel square can be placed anywhere in the game world, in various patterns.
Groups will continue to work on this project until November 12th, when a demo build is due. By then, the basic programming must be functional, a level must be designed with any music and colliders, and all User Interface, screens, sprites, and animations must be created or otherwise imported. After that, students will be able to combine their individual portions into one single game.
