During the pandemic, my spouse, daughter and I have played a variety of cooperative video games, that we’ll share here! — I have always enjoyed playing video games, and over the years I’ve gotten my spouse (and now our daughter) to play games together too. Before we had our daughter, my spouse and I played World of Warcraft (Wrath of the Lich King) together, and we had a ton of fun…

Starting a company to release games/apps on the Google Play Store? Here are the steps needed! — Recently, I founded Atas Fun, an indie game development company that I will be using to release my games on the Google Play store, Apple app store, Steam store and others! It took quite some time to set up Atas Fun (my company) to be able to release games on…

I created an endless runner/eating game, and set the game up to the played using biofeedback from the Lioness smart vibrator! — Interested in becoming a Medium member? If you sign up with my referral link, I’ll receive a portion of your membership fees! Disclaimer: this article contains affiliate links, where I may receive a portion of the sales at no cost to you. Update: The iOS and Android versions of this…

Saving and loading an open world game can be tricky, since objects can be created and destroyed based on the player’s actions. — In most games, the player is able to save their progress in the game, so that they can continue their saved game at a later time. In the different game genres, there are multiple ways games can be saved. For level-based games (e.g., Candy Crush Saga, Overcooked!), a player’s progress…

By storing data in JSON files, we can make changes to our game (e.g., quests, language localization) without any changes in Unity. — I recently wrote a guide on reading external XML files in Unity. From some discussion in a Reddit post I made, I learned that Unity also has built-in support from JSON files, and there may be performance benefits to using JSON files instead of XML files. Hence, after considering to…

By storing data in XML files, we can make changes to our game (e.g., quests, language localization) without any changes in Unity. — Update: I wrote a parallel version of this guide, on how to read external JSON files. Do check it out if you’re interested! The content of these two articles are similar, other than the format of the external files. Unity: Reading external JSON files By storing data in JSON files, we can make changes to our game (e.g., quests, language localization) without any…allison-liem.medium.com

Day-night cycles are important for some games, e.g., having creatures sleep at night. — In some games, it is useful to have a day and night cycle. For example, In Mystery Queen, the creatures of the world behave differently depending on the time of day, e.g., Slimey is only active when the sun is up, and goes to sleep at dusk. In this guide…

When characters walk behind objects, it’s useful to have the objects become translucent, instead of the characters being occluded. — In 2D games, characters (and sprites) move in an x-y plane corresponding to the screen. In order to create a sense of 3D depth, if an object A is “behind” an object B, then A is drawn on the screen before B, so B’s sprite occludes A. However, if the…

My spouse, daughter and I are working on a crafting/foraging game together! — Besides playing cooperative games together, my daughter and I have spent a fair amount of time playing crafting/foraging games too. One of the most famous games in this genre is Minecraft, although we haven’t personally played it much. My first foray into this genre was My Time in Portia, where…