William’s Shootables

In 2021, I joined a small group to participate in a game jam for a game that never materialized. It was a 2D platformer were the player was going to collect relics and learn about history. We had a programmer who would do the basic mechanics, but I wanted to learn how to make something like this on my own.

That’s how William’s Shootables was born. I wanted a character that could jump, double jump, and shoot. For the shooting, I wanted it to be like in Metroid. The left-stick makes the character both move and aim. You can also hold down one of the keys to stand in place, but still aim.

Then, I needed the “shootables.” (I like calling my targets shootables mainly because I personally think it’s funny.) I needed to figure out a way to count all those shootables, so that as the player shot them I could present that information in a very rudimentary UI.

For what it is, I am very proud of this project. It helped me figure out Unity’s objects, C# scripts, variables, etc. Doing projects like these, even if they’re really simple, is the best way to learn.

(Mainly because it took me 8 hours, several YouTube videos, and a whole bunch of StackOverflow links to figure everything out.)