Escape Velocity

In this game, the player controls a cat that has a rocket strapped to its back. The cat is tasked with collecting packages in a randomly generated galaxy. This galaxy consists of planets of varying size. While in the influence of the gravity of the planet, the player can do only one thing: speed up. Once the player is going fast enough, they can escape the gravity of the planet and float into space. Once in space, the player can turn and boost to get to neighbouring planets. The player has to travel from planet to planet to gather all the packages. Once the player has all the packages, they need to deliver them to a central point.

This game was very experimental. Because of this, there have been a lot of different versions with wildly varying game mechanics. At first, I wanted to create a world that would focus on one circle. The player could walk around this circle and interact with certain elements. However, this got out of hand quite quickly, as I realised that I would have to create a lot of content, which was not my intention. I wanted to create a short game that focused on a single mechanic. While testing the circle world, I noticed that the character would start to fly once it went fast enough. If it went even faster, it would escape from the circle. So instead of focusing on story and worldbuilding, I decided to focus on this one mechanic and see what I could do with it. There came the introduction of other planets of differing sizes and their own gravity fields. Since the player had to be persuaded to move around, I had them pick up packages that they had to deliver to a central point. This is the final version of the gameplay. The final version of the game included some more mechanics that focused on the quality of life of the game. I added mechanics like a map with the packages, a zooming camera, and arrows that point towards objectives.