Concept Statement
Snowy Descent was an idea born from my love of playing a fairly popular arcade game called Gravity Hill. In Gravity Hill, players move a small plastic mountain side to side with a bicycle-like handlebar to get a metal ball from the bottom of the mountain to the the top of the mountain. Doing so would either reward the player with either a lesser or greater prize depending on which hole at the top they got it into. I loved playing this arcade game as a kid and wondered how I could bring it back to the modern era of gaming as well as make the game better.
Game
In Snowy Descent players must rotate a mountain side to side to get a snowball from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain safely. Players use the accelerometer on their smartphone to rotate the mountain side to side to achieve this. As the player makes their way down the mountain they must maintain and grow the size of their snowball by continuously rolling over snow. Players must avoid hazards such as falling trees, freefalling for too long, avalanches which dramatically increase your size or completely falling off the mountain. More hazards to come such as white-out blizzards which obscure the mountain from the players vision, gusts of wind which will send the player flying, and more! Players are rewarded for getting to the bottom with a score which is given based off of the size of the snowball they have when they reach the bottom.
My Role
Developing Snowy Descent has largely been a single person effort. I have taken the initial concept I had of getting a snowball down a mountain by tilting a mountain side to side and executed on it and now i'm experimenting with new gameplay mechanics to spice things up a bit. I have been responsible for all of the coding and all of the design of this project.
Project Duration and Platform
iOS
Fall 2017 - Ongoing!
Team
Dylan Alter - Design, Programming, Particle Effects
Faith - Art
