Unite for Unity

Unite for unity-2

An intercollege event conducted in IIT Goa’s first-ever tech-fest Cepheus was organized from 15th to 17th January 2020. The event was entirely virtual and based on game development using the Unity Game Engine. Since the rise in video games has been quite tremendous in the past few years, this event was aimed to familiarize individuals with the tools and resources of designing a game. 

The event comprised two themes, one for beginners and one for experienced. The first one was meant to encourage students just starting with game development. The beginners were provided resources to set up Unity and to get acquainted with its environment and structure. The second category was for intermediate developers, who had some experience with Unity along with some minor projects.

The event participation was team-based (3-4 members) and each team was asked to select one of the two themes and design a game based on that. The themes provided were as follows:

  1. Switch to Survive (Beginner): This was an obstacle-avoiding racing game wherein participants had to create a custom path full of obstacles. The user’s character was represented by a ball. There were multiple types of balls used in the game to clear a particular obstacle. Paper ball was lightweight, though could fly in mid-air easily; Metal ball was the heaviest thus strongest, could destroy the obstacle if hit with sufficient force; Wooden ball was medium weight ball which could remove some objects and also float in water. The ball had to reach the finish line, avoiding all the obstacles, by switching the balls before the set time ends. The participants were provided with the path, ball, and obstacle description.
  2. Victory at Sea (Intermediate): This theme was based on a character named ‘Bob’ who was stuck on an unknown island. To reach his homeland, he needed a boat that was hidden and can only be found by completing three missions on the island. The first mission was to work as a delivery boy and deliver parcels in restricted time; the second was to help Alice find her toys hidden in the island itself; third was to escape from a maze before screen time ends. Participants had to create an environment and gameplay based on this theme. The mission description and other guidelines were provided to all the participants. 

The uniqueness of the event attracted a large number of participants and many amazing submissions. Entries for both the themes were judged and awarded separately. Winners and Runner-ups for each theme are mentioned below:

Theme 1 : 

Winner: Team AKA solo from Vimal Jyothi Engineering College

  1. Akash Ajith
  2. Nihal O
  3. Sangeeth K
  4. Abhinav Purushothaman

Runner up: Team Noob from NIT, Kurukshetra

  1. Sahil

Theme 2 : 

Winner: Team Varsity from NIT Rourkela

  1. Suyash Verma
  2. Saswat Kumar Sahoo
  3. Rahul Meher
  4. Sambit Kumar Pradhan

Runner up: Team AKM from Sai Tirumala NVR Engineering College

  1. M. Sai Krishna
  2. K. Karthik 
  3. A. Ganesh
  4. P. MohanSai 

All the submissions were judged based on the Completion, Originality, Creativity(Innovation), Design, Bugs(Run-time errors), Game interface, layout, and overall Gameplay experience of the designed games. Finally, the event concluded successfully along with the conclusion of tech-fest Cepheus.