Orbit

Oct 2

2 min read

Project Overview

Orbit is a 2D Unity pinball-esque, wave survival game where players use the Moon to protect Earth from asteroid storms, winning the Best Game Award for the MQ "Re-Entry" Game Jam in 2024. Orbit was created in a team of 4, and saw further development of the gameplay and UI after the competition.

My Role	Tools	Timeframe
UI/UX Design, Artist	Krita, Unity	4 day game jam, 1-2 weeks post game jam

Examples of main menu, controls and ranking popups, HUD, game over, and leaderboard.

Responsibilities

UI: Designed and implemented user interfaces into Unity, including the main menu, controls, HUD, and game over screens, using custom assets I had created.
Art: Drew all art assets and sprites used in the game, and animation keyframes in the game over screen.

Changes / Progression

Since the MQ Game Jam submission, two new asteroid types and a leaderboard were added to the game. The HUD also saw some design changes to fix some clarity issues brought up in playtesting of the game. Previously, the icon buttons that showed power-ups were simple text that, when clicked, toggled a power-up information panel. Players were distracted by reading the text, and often forgot what the power-up did or how to use it. To fix this, I replaced the button text with a custom icon image that showed the power-up with the key bind embedded in the image, and changed the information to show on mouse hover. This, paired with a lock over currently locked power-up icons, created a much smoother gameplay experience for players, who were no longer having their attention drawn to the text, away from the gameplay.