Keep E.T Alive

Hello fellow Developers and Gamers!

First let me start with this! I was aware about Ludum Dare for a long time, but I never participated in it. That changed this weekend  ! I finally decided to give this event a go and to try to develop a game in Unity! I have messed around with Unity before, but I never managed to “produce” something. That changed today as I’ve just “finished” my first “game” in it -> Keep E.T Alive.

So as name of the game suggest I followed the idea of the theme … perhaps too much . E.T has returned from his home planet back to Earth. He realized that he is missing some of the finest things from Earth - such as Beer or Meat. But he is very exhausted from the trip so you need to keep him alive! Feed him, don’t let him be thirsty and also clean after him. He may occasionally start to bleed as he is adjusting to earthly atmosphere again, so take care of that too!

Few Notes from my development process:

• Graphics - First I wanted to go with pixel-art, but I quickly realized that I will not have time for it as I’m not very - good at drawing it (it’s something I definitely want to improve on in future). So I decided for super fast solution -> MS Paint. All Sprites were drawn with it, hardest part was E.T itself as I had to combine different shapes, in different angles and sizes. I used GIMP for adding transparent layers.
• Code - In my professional life I am front-end React developer so when I realized that I can just use VSCode I was super happy! I set up few things, configured some extensions and I started coding right away! I learned a lot as this was basically my first project in Unity (they made their docs really easy to read). One thing that helped me a lot was plugin iTween recommended by a friend.
• Audio - This might have been my favorite part. I laughed whole time as I was creating and editing those sound effects. Good thing that I had that beer in fridge and also duck tape.

Things that I would improve or change: Biggest problem was the time. There are a couple of things that I really wanted to add to the game but I just didn’t have time.

1. Animations for E.T - right now E.T looks super blunt and it worsens overall feeling from the game. I wanted to add expressions to his face when beer was close to his Infusion or face of guilt when he would poop himself.
2. Another Need for E.T - there was a plan to add one more item iPhone with airpods. Player would have to give E.T airpods to both ears and then start song on iPhone (it would also change game sound loop) and than when E.T would have enough of listening, remove them and stop the song.
3. Better music - game sound loops were the last things I worked on and it shows. I used this web app https://beepbox.co/ to create some songs but I am really not happy with outcomes. I felt like my head wanted to explode at some point.

Overall I am super happy that I did this. I learned a lot, got nice experience and mainly it was super fun. I definitely will try next Ludum Dare! Heck, I might start working on some other game in meanwhile just because I might feel like it!

Downloads and Links
Source Code
https://github.com/Saviqq/Keep-E.T-Alive

Windows version
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MliBZHYoRt6_0qUSep0wZbs0Inbyevwi/view?usp=sharing