Tunnel Blasters Unity - Designing Sprites
Introduction
For my 2D Unity game Tunnel Blasters that I’m developing, I needed to design my own sprites. This is because the game I’m creating is a standalone project, not a direct copy of Bomberman. Having custom sprites also ties in better with the story I’m aiming to tell, helping to portray it more effectively.
I designed the following sprites using the animation graphic editor called GraphicsGale, which is an tool, intended for designing low-bit Pixelart.
Process
Due to the limited time after the Discover and Define phase, I had less than 2 weeks left to develop the Unity game for my passion-project, I was looking for ways on how to make sprites for my game, that would fit with the story of my game. I decided to look for custom made sprites on the website called ‘spriters-resource.com’ and ‘spritedatabase.net’, which are open source platforms where communities share their sprites, UI, HUD and even audio files.
And there I was able to find Bomberman sprites that I can use as base to design my low-bit pixel art designs for the game Tunnel Blasters. The ones I found can be seen below.
To sum it up my story is about a man called Jack the miner, who mines valuable gems as his profession and he works at a mineshaft. He wears a yellow hard hat and a blue overall outfit, while holding a pickaxe and a dynamite stick, before I wanted to go and apply the designs for my sprites. I wanted to envision this, so I generated several images using Grok AI and I handpicked a few that I liked base my character with.
End Result
This is the end result of the my own designed sprites for the game and it’s consists of the following:
Environment
• Wooden fences (Block): These will be the indestructible blocks that are scattered around the map and at the edges of the map, the player isn’t supposed to go passed them and can be used as cover from explosives.
• Ground(tile): These are the tiles where the player will walk on, it’s a grey colored tile, because the mineshaft is a rocky environment.
• Ground(tile)shadow: The same as above, these tiles will be placed below every Wooden fence to give the game a feel of depth and realism.
• Ore Brick (Block): These blocks are destructible and are very noticeable due to the visible minerals. The player is supposed to break these blocks to progress through the game, breaking them will drop powerups and also will give the player scores.
Bomb and Powerups items
• Extra Dynamite: These items will be pickup able once the player destroys the ore bricks. There is a probability on how often this power-up will drop. The more Extra dynamites the player, the more dynamites he is able throw.
• Diamond gem: This item is a rare drop, it works similar as the Dynamite power up, but if the player picks this up it will increase the blast radius. More diamonds equals more wider and bigger damage radius. The player has to be careful not get caught in his own blast.
• Emerald gem: Increases player speed, allows the player to dodge the opponent’s dynamites easier to prevent getting hurt by the blast. Similar to Diamond and Dynamite powerups. The more you pick up the faster you will be.
Character design
Jack the miner (Main protagonist): He will be recognizable due to his yellow helm and his blue outfit, wearing brown gloves and a belt with a golden badge on it.
His facial expression indicates that he is anxious and concerned, yet fearless. He also have his own sprite death animation, in comparison to his opponents to make him stand out.
Feedback from User testing my game
During the playtest of my game I interviewed participants: 2 students and 2 teachers and asked them what they liked about the visuals of the game and I got the feedback from on this.
ICT & Media design students feedback:
‘The visuals looks nice and you can clearly see it’s being played inside a mine, because the blocks are resembling ore and the environment also does feel like it’s being played inside a mine.’
ICT & Media design teachers Medhat and Maikel feedback:
‘The visuals looks great and original very nice that you have designed these sprites on your own, because we haven’t seen anything like this before in a Bomberman game. We also like you’ve chosen a mineshaft as your environment inside a mining cave’
Reflection
I’m grateful that the designs were received well by the participants that play tested my game, It encourages and motivates me to keep developing the game in the frontend part to fine tune my designs and also add more tiles and bricks so there is more variation.
I only made one character design so far for the main character in my game, but I’m thinking to also make separate designs for the opponents, but for now I think I’ve achieved my goal and the mandatory things I wanted to have in my game.
There also plans for me in the future to implement an interface, such as a HUD and a main menu, which will most likely be after I’m finished adding the backend features into my game.