Description

Mars 21 is a cooperative platform game for 2 players on PC. Player 1 controls an astronaut moving on the ground and player 2 controls a flying Martian creature. The two characters have different abilities and the players must cooperate to finish the game.

Astronaut bust Alien with halo

Screenshots

Mars 21 screenshot - title menu in French Mars 21 screenshot - Opening cinematic Mars 21 screenshot - Alien light reveals hidden platform in green Mars 21 screenshot - Astronaut is climbing down

Context

The game was developed in 1 month as our first video game project for the Interactive Digital Experience curriculum at Gobelins (Paris). The setting of the game is loosely based on science fiction short story collection The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. The game was further polished the following year over 3 months, in parallel with the development of new projects.

Team

  • Long Nguyen Huu: Game design, Level design, Gameplay / UI programming
  • Ludovic Marguerie: Game design, Level design, 3D modeling, Story, Sound design
  • Coralie Perot: Concept art, Character design, Story, Opening movie
  • Jean-François Cœur: Graphics programming, Gameplay / UI programming

Role

Game design

  • Astronaut control design
  • Alien damage rules

Level design

  • Setup of environment colliders
  • Fine platform and hazard placement
  • Checkpoint placement
  • Light cues

Gameplay programming

  • Astronaut character controller
  • Damage, death and respawn system with checkpoints

UI programming

  • UI tween animations
  • UI and movie subtitles localization system

Build

  • WebGL support
  • Various optimizations

3D integration

  • Integration of humanoid model and animations
  • Damage particle effects

Localization

  • English translation (from French)

Unity packages

Acknowledgements

  • Setting based on The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (especially The Green Morning and The Watchers)
  • Electric Sparks SFX by Connum on freesound (CC-BY-NC 3.0)