Abound

Swirl Around

Abound is a game about controlling a swarm, creating beautiful movements and getting larger and larger by collecting other swarms.

The player controls a swarm and is responsiple for its growth. Growth is the key to progress and is achieved by absorbing smaller swarms through right manouvers. The challenge lies in catching the smaller swarms and avoiding the bigger ones that threaten to absorb the player.

Project Information

Time

4 months

Tasks

System Design, UX, Level Design, Gameplay Programming, Prototyping, Sound Design, Videos

Tools

Unity, Visual Studio, Cubase

Team

M. Decker,  B. Langa, F. Wolf, J. Hellmann

Context

3rd semeter project at HTW Berlin

Coaches

Prof. Susanne Brandhorst, Prof. Thomas Bremer

Key Features

  • Dynamic swarm movement inspired by real world aquivalents
  • Adaptive AI merging and splitting depending on the players behavior
  • Collect other swarms to grow
  • Bigger swarms are more dangerous but also less agile

Unique Selling Points

  • Beautiful swarm movement with a distinctive feel
  • Easily accessible through intuitive controls
  • Relaxing and unique environment
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During our studies intern exhibition HIVE:FIVE 2019. Public to everyone
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Through the intuitive controls not only hardcore gamers can enjoy the game
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The player collecting a smaller swarm
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During our studies intern exhibition HIVE:FIVE 2019. Some players just enjoyed flying freely around
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Forms arising during a fight
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Fights sometimes resemble a dance
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Bigger swarms (purple) try to catch you
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A bigger swarm stealing parts of your swarm
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Looking at the prison: collect all swarms to break it
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There are lots of swarms in each biome, flying around independently
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Hiding behind some obstacles
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During our studies intern exhibition HIVE:FIVE 2019. Public to everyone
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Focus to master your movement
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My Contribution

  • Conceptualizing, prototyping, playtesting, evaluation
  • Creating system diagrams for team commuication
  • Designing and programming of the AI (states; merging and splitting)
  • Supporting the main programmer Florian Wolf (swarm movement, player feedback, colors, bug fixing, …)
  • Full game audio: sound design for everything

Learnings

This project was my biggest challenge so far. Being technically very complex and conceptually hard to determine, my main learning was to go for simple solutions, as this will make communication easier and accelarate the iteration process. I trained myself in conceptualizing, handling a lot of code, doing systematic bug fixing and communicating clearly.

Process

We took swarm movements as an intersting starting point and iterated from there on this sole core feature. As it was pretty hard to find a working game system, we tried out and dropped a lot of mechanics. By experimenting a lot and restricting ourselves to really focus on the swarm movement, we found a system that is fun to play with.