Rise of Icarus
After falling from the sky, Icarus decides to take revenge on the Sun. Climb Tower of Helios and face the Sun!
Rise of Icarus is my first solo Unreal Engine project.
Initially, it started as a Temple Run-esque game with lanes and horizontal movement.
(also it was called Run of Icarus)
Eventually, because of my love for interesting movement mechanics, I turned the movement into something I had in mind for a while - no W and S, only A and D to move.
Using this project for experimentation helped me understand different types of players.
I hated the extra side-view window in the video above, which is why the latest (so far) iteration of that idea is my favorite.
I got great feedback from play-testing and the downsides of this experimental movement mechanic.
The play-testing showed that while the movement was fluid and kind of like ice-skating, level design-wise the game was unforgiving. There was basically no tutorial and it instantly started with a hard challenge of straight-walk climbing, which was a hard movement mechanic for most people.
This is what the game was intended to be played like but it was a classic developer's mistake of expecting your players to know the game as much as you.