Marine Merge was created as a puzzle game for the theme, "Overflow," with a special item "brush". On a team of two over the course of three days, Téa and her partner created an experience inspired by the classic evolution game in which the player cares for their aquarium and avoids overpopulating their tank with bigger and bigger aquatic creatures. The player may evolve from a tiny minnow to a great white shark if they play carefully and intentionally, learning the patterns of which fish evolve. While played on a 2D landscape, the visuals were inspired by a cartoon-shaded 3D structure. My contrubution emphasized gameplay programming and 3D modeling.
About the Process
I developed the main gameplay mechanics with greyboxes for fish, ensuring that the programming functioned as we neeeded before developing 3D models. Each 'fish' represented an entity of a certain evolution. If two similar objects touch, they will 'evolve' into the next fish.
A major challenge, given the short time frame, was ensuring that objects were carefully created and destroyed at the exact right time. If new objects were instantiated too soon or early, then they would interrupt the functionality of new and current objects in the scene
Sound and animation were developed by Alex Kutza, who I worked alongside during this game jam.
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