I have always been fascinated with the idea and potential of procedural generation. I also have been interested in exploring more simplistic games that are void of story, violence and external motivation, but instead are driven by natural competition with others and one’s self.
Primitive is an ongoing experiment based on those two interests. It is an arena-styled survival game where the player controls a sphere attempting to survive as long as possible against constant swarms of other basic 3-dimensional primitives. Each shape represents a different class with individual movement types and attacks. The name Primitive is a play on both the shapes that build the game and the simplistic, straight-forward nature of the gameplay.
The first map — called Arena — is randomly generated at the start of each game. The process begins with creating a grid of a specified size, filling each position with one of two prefabs, staggering each one on on each axis, then placing one of two lights spaced evenly throughout the scene: either a static blue light, or a red one that will change colors to represent the current obstacles the player is facing.
The second — named Dash — is built of an array of static panels that, as the player moves around the playing field, will rotate and translate into their final position. As the player leaves the area, they will then return to their starting point. The array will procedurally determine different gaps so that, as players race around the field, they have to adapt quickly to the missing sections that only become evident just before they arrive.