Mc(Hack)fee Antivirus 2022 - Pan(demic)-Man

Winner of the "Achievement Unlocked: most fun and creative game dev hack" and the "Best Design: most aesthetic hack sporting nice UI/UX" superlatives @ McHacks 9!

This project was built for McHacks 9, a virtual, 36-hour hackathon. Our goal was to learn more about game development, so we created a COVID-themed spoof of the classic '80s arcade game: Pac-Man.

Try the game HERE!

Project made with ❤️ by Nathalie, Elinor and Alex.

✍️ Project Description

Oh no! Pac-Man is being hunted by COVID-19 variants: Alpha (Pink), Beta (Beta), Delta (Orange), and Omicron (Green). Classic game pieces ('sprites') like ghosts, power pellets, and fruits have been replaced by things we are all now unfortunately familiar with: COVID-19 variants, face-masks, vaccine syringes, hand sanitizer, and more.

💡 Inspiration

This project was inspired by our desire to dive into the world of game development, an area our team was unfamiliar with. We approached this hackathon with learning being the main end goal of our project. The idea for the game itself was, in no small part, inspired by the realities of the current pandemic and of course, Pac-Man.

⚙️ How we built it

The game was built on the Unity game development platform using C# and is largely based on a tutorial by Zigorous (YouTube, Github). We would like to credit the original author and emphasize that we approached this hackathon purely as a learning experience.

• The pills, syringe, and hand sanitizer required individual function implementations in C# for the "ghost" reactions to the power-ups
• Fun(?), appropriately themed game over text was added
• Animation of of Pacdemic-Man death scene was created
• Custom sprites were added for most of the game pieces

The sprites were custom made by our team just for this project, see them in all of their glory below!

🚧 Challenges we ran into

The Unity platform has a big learning curve, especially since no one on our team was familiar with C#. We ran into quite a few roadblocks trying to find settings and functions we had never used before.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're definitely very proud of the game as a whole and the creativity that went into making it possible.

🧠 What we learned

We learned a lot more about the game development process, the Unity platform, and the rules of Pac-Man. The physics behind the movements of Pac-Man and ghosts was particularly fun to learn about and code!

And at least for some of us, that game development is not a career path we'll be pursuing.

🎮 Gameplay

• Like the original Pac-Man game, the goal is to accumulate as many points as possible
• Gameplay begins immediately!
• Move pacdemic-man with the W A S D keys or up down left right arrow keys
• Edible variants move at half-speed

Item	Bonus
Vaccine	+1 life
Pill	5s immunity & slower variants & +25 pts
Mask	edible variants & +50 pts
Hand Sanitizer	+15 pts
Pellets	+10 pts

Custom Sprites

COVID-19 "Ghost" Variants:

Alpha Variant	Beta Variant
Delta Variant	Omicron Variant

Vulnerable ghosts:

Face-mask "power pellets":

Vaccine syringe, hand sanitizer, and pill -themed "fruits":

📦 Demo

🧹 Repository Organization

.
├── README.md
├── custom_sprites
│   ├── Fruit_Pill.png
│   ├── Fruit_Sanitizer.png
│   ├── Fruit_Syringe.png
│   ├── Ghost_Alpha.png
│   ├── Ghost_Beta.png
│   ├── Ghost_Delta.png
│   ├── Ghost_Omicron.png
│   ├── mask.png
│   ├── pacman_0.png
│   ├── pacman_1.png
│   ├── pacman_10.png
│   ├── pacman_11.png
│   ├── pacman_2.png
│   ├── pacman_3.png
│   ├── pacman_4.png
│   ├── pacman_5.png
│   ├── pacman_6.png
│   ├── pacman_7.png
│   ├── pacman_8.png
│   ├── pacman_9.png
│   ├── pacmans.png
│   └── pill.png
├── demos
│   ├── alpha.png
│   ├── beta.png
│   ├── delta.png
│   ├── edible.png
│   ├── mask.png
│   ├── omicron.png
│   ├── pill.png
│   ├── sanitizer.png
│   └── syringe.png
└── panman
    ├── Assets
    ├── Library
    ├── Logs
    ├── Packages
    ├── ProjectSettings
    ├── Temp
    └── UserSettings

10 directories, 32 files