Sequels are always better

The sequel nobody asked for!

In case you're unaware, a few years ago I created a 'board game' type game for my Mum's 60th birthday that fell during Covid. I turned that game into the Wolfpack Christmas Game. The original went through several iterations before it became what it is now, and though I was happy with it, there would have been some things I would have changed or done differently. I was planning to go back to it and do all the things I wanted to do, only to find that I had somehow lost the Unity project. I have no idea where it went, but it was nowhere. I never used Github or anything similar as the project contains a lot of personal information so I really didn't want the project files to ever exist on the internet. I'm sure I'd end up getting scammed or be the victim of identity fraud if I did, something I'd rather avoid.

So, it was time, time to do all the things I wanted, but not by updating the old game, but from remaking the game from scratch. So that's what I did! The good thing was I already had knowledge of the way I did things before, and though I didn't have access to any of the scripts or classes, the knowledge was learned. 

There were a few things I immediately knew that I needed to change. The first of these being making the whole game automatic. I know this may sound strange, but the original was anything but automatic, in fact it was downright manual. You see, when a player rolled the die (which was automatic to be fair), they would then need to use the 'WASD' keys to move their pawn around the board. Then after moving, I would need to click on a button on screen to activate the space they landed on. When someone won a mini-game, the game wouldn't know who won until I click the button saying 'P1 won' or whichever player won that mini-game.

So, with that in mind, I set about making the game run 'automatically'. That meant players will click the die to roll it and then their 'pawn' would move along the board the correct number of spaces on its own. After moving the space they landed on would activate automatically, and then it would become the next players turn. I used a waypoint system for the spaces. Each waypoint is placed on a uniform grid and has an 'Space ID'. This lets the game controller know which space a player has landed on, and activates the correct effect. Once I got this working, it really did start to feel like a new game.

With the movement working, I decided to make a more linear board, I felt the open nature of the previous one made the game unbalanced. Players would often choose to always land on a 'good' space even if it took them away from their intended target location. Not only did this mean certain spaces rarely got landed on, but it just meant players would fall too far behind and be unable to catch up, which wasn't fun. So I created a 2D tile set with roads and other pieces and I planned out a linear path. This way players would have to land on whichever space their die roll chose. This immediately led to a more varied and more balanced game.

Though I did enjoy the more linear nature, I still had to figure out the use for coins. In the original game, coins had many different uses in the different iterations. For this new game, I decided to add shortcut paths that the player could spend coins to use. This would give players a good reason to want to land on yellow spaces and to win mini-games. I made sure the shortcuts, though impactful, weren't too broken by skipping too many spaces. From testing, the shortcuts are a fine addition to the game.

The mini-games came next. Again, I wanted these to be all automatic. By that, I mean I wanted the games to 'know' which player won without me having to click a button. So I created a minigameController script that would communicate with the gameController to know which player triggered the mini-game, how many players were in the game, and the order they should take part. By combining these two controllers I was able to make sure that mini-games just happen, without any outside interference from me.

Next was 'Action Cards'. This took the most time planning. The original version of this game used actual physical cards and when a player landed on an action card space I would give them a physical card which they could use at various times. I didn't want to have to make a whole new set of action cards so I decided to implement an action card system into the game itself. This went through a few iterations before I decided to implement a system inspired by 'roguelite' games. This being, when landing on an action card space, players would get the choice of three cards. They would have to choose one of these cards. Some would trigger an effect immediately and some would be used at a later date. I have been thinking of developing roguelite games and this feature of having to choose between several options is always a fun idea, and adds a bit of strategy to each action card event.

Once the coding was done, I prettied up the graphics a bit, to the best of my ability. I ran many, many test games to ensure everything worked, bug free, and so far there has been no game breaking bugs.

The final thing I actually did, strangely, was the game set up itself. I think the reason for this is because the original version didn't really have a 'setup phase'. You just chose the number of players and kind of just started. For the set-up, I took 'inspiration' from Mario Party 2 (please don't sue me Nintendo), even using the same music. I downloaded some character images that I knew my family liked to use as their 'pawns', rather than just a coloured pawn like in the original. I made it so the number of players can be chosen, from 2 to 8, then each player can be given a name and select a character before the game begins. Just a simple thing, but it adds a lot, and makes it feel more like a 'game'.

And that's it, a few months of work to remake a project from scratch that was lost forever. This game will be constantly updated and added to, I will add new 'Wolf History' and 'Location' questions every year as and when things happen to our family. This game will never be available for download, but if you are here from a job I've applied for and you want to see the project, I will happily bring the project with me to an interview to show off.

Thank you for reading this and hopefully this is the last time I'll have to remake this game. I'm going to be a lot more careful with the project files this time around.