Wandering Ash
Click on the picture to go to the Screenshot Gallery.
The Game:
The leaf was not always a leaf. Once, the leaf was a person. One day, this person stumbled upon the evil witch's castle, between our world and the world of the void. The witch transformed the person into a leaf, and flung the leaf away, toward the world of the void. The closer one gets to the world of the void, the fewer things exist. If an object gets too close, its existence threshold is reached, and it ceases to exist entirely. This would have happened to the leaf, but luckily for it, a gust of wind prevented it from going too far toward the void. Saved from nonexistence, the leaf must find its way back to the witch's castle to break the curse, and return to reality!
Features:
Draw lines of wind to blow the leaf away from harm!
Simple controls (only requires a mouse to play)
6 challenging levels
Convenient options
Unlockable cheats
Release Date:
December 24, 2005
Requirements:
Windows XP
DirectX 9.0 (go here to get the most recently updated version)
Game Download:
Developers:
Andrew Pinson
The Rest of the Story:
This game was created for the Arcade game project in EECS 494. I had known about the arcade game project in EECS 494 before I signed up for the class, so I had already thought about what I would want to make for it. What I wanted to make was a 2D spaceship shooter game. I had planned out a lot of new and different things for it, and even made some art. So, on the day the arcade game was being assigned to us, I was feeling pretty good. Then, near the end of lecture, Prof. Laird said, "Oh, one thing. I really don't want to see any games that have a spaceship, where things come down from the top of the screen, and you shoot them with your spaceship. Not even if you have your spaceship moving from left to right instead of down to up. I've just seen too many of those games in the past, so I don't want to see any more of them." When I heard that, I thought, "NOOOOOOOoooooo! He banned my game idea!". I had told some of my friends about my idea before, and as soon as they heard Prof. Laird say that, they had to laugh. Later on, I was trying to think of what game I would make instead. I was walking to a Wolverine Soft officer meeting to rehearse our speeches for the mass meeting, when I looked up at the leaves on the trees. And that's when I decided I would make a game about a leaf.
When I met the other officers for the meeting, and explained my arcade game situation to them, one of them asked, "So what are you going to do now?"
I replied, "I'm going to make a game about a leaf." After a full minute of silence, I went on. "So, you'll have this leaf, and you have to not let it die. So, you can't let it hit the ground, because someone would step on it. And there could be other things too. There could be dogs that want to eat the leaf, so you have to keep it away from them. You won't actually control the leaf directly, you'll have to make wind to blow the leaf out of harm's way."
I think the general response initially was something like, "Huh, that's a strange idea." This was soon followed by, "I want to see this game."
According to the assignment, I had about three weeks to do this project. However, because I was also taking EECS 381 at the time (another programming-heavy class), I was not able to officially start on this game until five days before it was due. The only thing I had done before this five day period was to create the idea for the game, and make some of the artwork (the leaf sprite, the animated dog face, and getting the picture of the leaf for the title screen). That was it. Everything else was made in the five day time period.
When it came time for the project to be due, Wandering Ash had completed gameplay on all six levels, the full story for the game, the high score list, and all of the options. It wasn't totally complete as far as my personal standards, but what I submitted would be considered a complete game by others. The score I got on it was 97 out of 100. Not bad for five days of work, huh?
After my workload calmed down a little (the semester ended), I came back to the project to fix some minor things with the game, make the cheats unlockable, and prepare everything to create a completed version of the game. After everything else was done, I added the Wolverine Soft logo screen, tested everything thoroughly, and declared the game complete.
I'm very happy with how this game came out. The only thing I wish I could have added were boss battles for the levels, but it would have taken a lot of additional development time to do so. It also would have increased the difficulty level of the game, and I'm sure that many players will feel that the game is difficult enough as it is.
I imagine most players will use a traditional mouse, as I did, to play this game. However, if you would like to try something different, you can make the game more difficult by using a laptop touchpad instead of the mouse, or, if you would like to make it less difficult, try using a pen mouse (such as those made by Wacom) to play the game.