A difference of night and day

I tended to avoid 'directing' game level, or creating more than minimal content to my games, as I somewhat felt that I don't want to create a game that is mostly based on going through some content flow. It also has a lot to do with my short academic career, when I built simulations of natural and social phenomena. I wanted my game to be a bit like simulations.

So I decided that for start, the game should behave differently when the player is in the village, and when travelling in the roads. This change also responded to one of the issues I had with the game: that time did progress when the player moves inside the villages at the same rate it would progress when moving between them. This was highly unrealistic.

I created two game modes: Village and Travel. When in the village mode, the camera is focused on the village area. Player movements do not progress time (remember the game has Roguelike movement). When the player move out of the village, the game prompts them that they will get hungry when travelling, and that hunger will hurt their health. The player can leave the village or stay. This prompt also solves the problem of introducing the hunger and health mechanisms to the player.

This change in time behavior led to my second main game addition: night and day experience. I learnt how to add lights to Unity 2D games, and created a global light for the sun, light in the village, and a lamp the player holds. Next, I adjusted the time scale so travelling between the two villages will take about 24 hours. This time scale makes much more sense, and users will probably understand why they should eat 3 times if they want to complete their journey. Lastly, I calculated sun light colors based on Sun Photo Calculator and the simulated hour of the day.

Now the game has a completely new experience, and I'm intrigued to see how users will react.