The Blossom Game, Technical Task.

Apart from working on the two university projects, I also spent about a week in May (2022) developing a simple Unity game as a part of a recruitment process. It was the second stage of the recruitment process. I applied for an internship at the gaming company called Daftcode, based in Warsaw, in Poland. I originally come from Poland and speak both languages (Polish and English) that were required for that role, therefore I had decided to give it a go. After submitting my application, I was asked to complete a technical assignment.  

The task was to build a survival type game with a player and spawning objects (could be balls), with two types of objects. The first type of object the player gains points with, by tapping them. The second type of spawning element causes the player to explode and lose the game. 

The game would need to consist of two scenes/screens: menu and the game scene. The scene with the actual game would need to have a play button, timer and score count and display.  

I started by making some sketches and writing down notes about how I want the game to work and look. I decided that the player would be a flower that tries to tap bees. There would be two types of bees: a regular looking black and yellow bee (called the “Bee” in the game) that would give the player a point after colliding with it – desired action. The other type of bee – black Bee Bombs – needed to be avoided as tapping equals losing the game. 

Below I am presenting the readme file I had created and attached to the code when it was time to submit the assignment. It is available on my GitHub.  

The Blossom Game. 

The Objective. 

The Balls is the original game name. As the project progressed the name was changed to Blossom. The objective of the game is for the player = Lotus flower to catch/tap as many Bees as possible. One Bee tap equals one point. The player must be careful as black bees as Bee Bombs and tapping one equals to exploding and losing. The game consists of 3 scenes: Menu, Game and Rules. 

Game Navigation. 

“Welcome to the Blossom Game” is the welcome screen, along with 3 buttons: 1. Game button – navigates to the Game scene; 2. Rules – navigates to the Rules scene; 3. Quit – to leave the game (not active in the current version of the game). After clicking on the game button, the player lands in the game scene. The Game scene has a game board, timer, score display, and 3 buttons: 1. Play button – after clicking it, the timer starts and the score count becomes active. 2. Rules – navigates to the Rules scene; 3. Go Back – navigates to the Menu scene. The game board has walls with colliders, so the player as well as the spawning randomly Bees and Bee Bombs stay within the play area. The Rules scene has two active buttons: 1. Main Menu – navigates to the Menu scene; 2. Go to Game – navigates to the Game scene. 

Mechanics. 

The player uses the keyboard arrows to move on the game board. “Up” and “down” keys to move along the Y axis, and “left” and “right” arrow keys to move along the X axis. 

Build environment. 

The game was built for the Android OS in Unity 2020.3.32f1 game engine. 

Future fixes and development. 

Saving the highest score achieved. 

This feature was not developed in this version. The score is only presented while the game takes place. 

Sound effects. 

There are no sound effects in this version. 

Visual effects. 

There is an explosion sprite which is not attached to the Game Objects and not executed in this version. The Bee Bomb object will explode when tapped by the Player. The Player object will be destroyed as well, and the game is over then. 

The game I built did not have all the features the company asked for, but it was a ready and playable product. It was the first ever game I developed in response to a detailed brief from a non-university related institution. I enjoyed the process of making it, as much as playing it. It was a work under pressure though, as I was working on two other big projects at that time. 

I received feedback from the company saying that they had a big amount of submitted projects and therefore mine was not good enough when compared to other productions.  

It was a good, but at the same time quite big and demanding task for the internship role.