DEER RUSH
Designed by Ahmad Nursalim and Robert Stuart Clarke
Deer Rush is a serious game developed using Unity development environment. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator mostly used to make textures, menu screen, UI, and concept arts. The game is designed to help raise environmental awareness with relation to the negative impacts on nature through human-initiated events. This is achieved through the storyline of the game, which is screenshotted below. The storyline presented a great opportunity to show not only the negative impacts that humans can have on the environment in even the smallest of ways, but also what repercussions can follow.
With the exception of the rock, fence and water, all models and textures are original and created by the development team. The game allows for players to control a deer that shall have to avoid and/or destroy a number of obstacles. However, some obstacles shall have to be met head-on. The karma aspect of the game does not only come for the antagonistic AI controlled lumberjack, but also for the end-user controlled deer. The deer shall run through flames, thus reducing his health but increasing karma levels. Once a certain level of karma has been reached, the deer can ram the lumberjack out of the forest. The trick is to find a balance between health and karma. However, if health is too low, the player can find a pool of water to gain health but consequently lose karma.
The game makes use of many realistic colours, while still maintaining a virtual look and feel. The water used in the game is a built-in asset provided for use by a Unity package. The rock was free-use and the author is not required to be mentioned. The fence was created Kev92 and can be found at BlendSwap.
The game shall promote environmental awareness in only one way, but future development prospects allow for environmental awareness to be address at many different angles. The development team shall look at this prospect and shall create a schedule to further enhance the game.
