Gameplay

How to play Saving the Michi AR

by Jorge 

In this section, it will be described how to play Saving the Michi AR. This is done to provide the Player a visual guide about what to do to have a better experience playing the game.

The flow of the gameplay would be as follows:

1. Move your phone until it detects the floor. If the floor is too shiney, it may take more effort to your phone to detect it, move your phone close to the floor (with your camera looking to it) to detect it faster
2. Once the floor was detected, a countdown to start the game will show to tell you how many michis you need to save at that level to clear it
3. The game starts! Michis will randomly appear in your surroundings, move your phone around you to find where the michis are spawn
4.  When you detect a michi, it's time to feed it! Press the "Feed the Michi" button to throw a fish to the michis until you hit the michi with it and that counts as a michi fed

Keep an eye on 2 important elements:

• Watch out for the chrono in the screen, you will have between 40 and 70 seconds (depending on the level you are Playing in) 
• The counter for saved michis. This keeps track of the michis you have saved so far in the game, if you meet the minimal quota of saved michis, you clear the level and you can go to the next one, if not, you will have the opportunity to watch an advertisement (if you have access to internet) to get 20 extra seconds of gameplay to reach the quota. If your device has no access to internet, you will be offered to go to the main menu

Since an image says more than a thousand words, here is a video showing the gameplay of Saving the Michi AR: 

Gameplay of Saving The Michi AR at Stage 4

You can refer to the Game Design Document Outline to see the game flow and have a better understanding about how are the mechanics of the game.

Characteristics of the game

Saving the Michi AR has 14 levels and a Gallery of 111 photographies of different cats, the photographies were provided by different friends that have a michi as a family member.

The game has different advertisements models: banner (on the top of the screen during the gameplay), interstitial (during the transition of levels) and reward (to get 20 extra seconds or unlock a cat picture in the gallery). However, it is NOT mandatory to have an internet connection to finish the game. No internet = no problem to play the game; the only difference is that the Player will not be able to get the extra time to finish a level nor unlock locked pictures in the gallery.

 There are 11 different 3D cats, that are unlocked from level 1 to level 11. 

 Models implemented in the 3D cats

The initial model to make the 3D cats, were based in the free asset offered in the Unity Asset Store. Here are some of the textures used to make the models of the cats in the game, the orange cat that appears from Level 1 and the brown cat that appears from Level 9:

 

Texture of default orange cat

 

 

3D model in Unity of the orange cat, with its capsule colliders in the head and body

 

 

Texture of brown cat with heterochromia in its eyes

 

 

3D Model in Unity of the brown cat with heterochromia

In the Game Design Document Outline you can find a table with the description of the 11 models of cats used in the game.

To modify the colors of the default texture, it was used Gimp, an open source software that allows the manipulation of images.

For the fish, it was used the herring from this free Unity Asset Store. No modifications were made to it.

3D Model of the herring that is used to feed the michis in the game

There will be another section where it is explained how was the developement process of the game, what difficulties were found and how they were coped, which tutorials/videos were used and how it was necessary to ask the proper questions in internet to get a good solution for these challenges.

Thanks for reading and enjoy playing Saving The Michi AR!