Pheasant Goes Home
~ Road-Crossing Game ~
Instead of sketching out my ideas by hand, I used reference images and drew sprites in Photoshop.
Feather explosion png map
Gameplay
Pheasant Goes Home is a 2D game built for PC platform through Unity Play. It is a road-crossing game similar to Frogger. The goal is to get across the road to the pheasant’s nest while avoiding vehicle obstacles.
There are a total of 19 different sprites created, which includes the following: pheasant player; mountains; 2 types of clouds; 2 types of trees; 2 types of hills; fence obstacle; log obstacle; 2 types of vehicles (car and motorcycle); bird nest; feather particle for explosion; confetti particle for win; game title sign; start text image; win text image; and lose text image.
For this game’s concept, I first decided on the environment, which I pulled from my home surroundings. I designed a country road with mountains and conifers in the background. This also includes the pines and aspens of Flagstaff, as well as rolling hills with snowy mountain peaks for the background. For the vehicles, I chose a 1940s coup and motorcycle for a vintage feel since the mountain roads in Flagstaff feel as if they were the originals when route 66 was established.
I used the same method in choosing the pheasant for the player as I did the environment. I researched what kinds of mountain birds prefer walking over flying. It just happened to be that a male pheasant’s colors paired well with the colors throughout the game. My color pallet for this game is autumnal because it’s my favorite time of year.
The music and ambience I used for this game were created through SoundTrap, and sounds effects were pulled from the Adobe sound effect collection. I created a country style soundtrack for gameplay to match the mountain road/countryside motif. I also added highway ambience along with the music which adds to the vehicles on the road. I chose a trumpet for the lose sound effect so that it might mimic a bird, but not be so similar to a birdcall that the game becomes sad or violent. The win music I also created with SoundTrap. I chose to pull away from the country genre and moved toward a playful, bass-heavy piece to really stand out from the gameplay soundtrack. I also added baby bird chirps to signify that the pheasant made it home to his nest of soon-to-hatch chicks.
