The Project
Fridge Game is a basic faux-2D platformer made in Unreal Engine 4. The game was developed with the requirement of including the player verbs “bounce” and “skate”, and was built over a 2-week period by a 5-person team.
Fridge Game challenges the player to jump their way through a platform-littered level using only three mechanics: launch, bounce, and skate. Launch allows the player to slingshot in a chosen direction and forms the bulk of movement. Bounce repeats and boosts a previous launch or bounce, but requires careful timing. Skate simply removes ground friction, allowing the player to chain launches or bounces.
Playtests revealed that players had a hard time getting used to the launch mechanic, but reported overall that it was fun to play with and felt good.
My Role
For Fridge Game, I was the gameplay programmer. I wanted to use the project as an opportunity to get some more practice with visual scripting and Unreal, and so began work on what would eventually become the eponymous Fridge.
Since the game needed the player verbs “bounce” and “skate” and the team had settled on a platformer genre, I thought it would be interesting to restrict players to those verbs entirely. Instead of standard axis movement, I created a slingshot-like mechanic inspired by the main interaction of Angry Birds.
To move, players must pull back to create an aim vector, and release to actually move. The aim vector is loosely represented by a large green arrow, with an additional green dot tracking the mouse. Both indicators have their lengths tapered-off with an inverse curve.
Sydney Fonderie 