Thank you, I’m really glad to hear that. the game is basically intended to mimic toys from my son’s collection and have them come to life, very similar to the idea of Toy Story but more of it taking place within a child’s imagination.
This allowed for a blend of real life and toys. The volcano level is intended to be a science experiment being shown off at an American style science fair, hence the cardboard bordering the edges. It’s like how children tend to place their toys in various locations and mix and match various play-sets etc.
I’m really happy to hear you like the animations. I’m definitely not an animator and I used mainly Mixamo animations for the monkey with my own rig (to save money.) The dinosaur is my own rig and animations, since it’s a less standardized shape. it was my first real foray in to game animations.
Camera position was an early decision. In the prototype stage I initially had the more traditional camera and changed to a front facing camera fairly early in. it allowed the player to get a better look at the dinosaur (the real star of the game, since it’s based on my son’s favourite toy)
I’m also going for a very 90s style game, much akin to Crash Bandicoot, which had various levels where you are chased with a front facing camera. I also use the camera FOV to help with difficulty. It’s a fairly wide FOV to begin with, and there is a pickup which boosts the player’s speed - this pickup also increases the FOV to deal with the difficulty increase that comes with going faster.
I am happy with the way it plays. Initially the controls weren’t inverted, which definitely made it jarring.
The controls basically work on camera position rather than character - so pressing left will send the character to the player’s / camera’s left.