Poppets VI The Hand of Henson

In Poppets V Wasteland players were left on a cliffhanger..14 months later find out where everyone has ended up and exactly what The Hand of Henson means!

Play Poppets V Wasteland first to see what lead up to this moment!

REVIEWS

"You want a quote?" - Cian O'Neill

"Please get away from me, I won't play your game" - Alex Cahill

"Poppets VI Hand of Henson is without a doubt the greatest cinematic experience I've played since Poppets V Wasteland" - Barrack Obama

"This game made me feel like a hollow shell of a man" - Bernie Sanders

Essay on game process.

When I first started working on this project I knew I wanted it to be a sequel to my original Fungus game Poppets V: Wasteland. It was difficult to know what I wanted to do since I never thought past the ending to that game while making it. I started off by writing notes in my notebook, sketching out general ideas and phrases that may be used in the game. From there I went straight into Unity, I knew I wanted there to be a 1st person section so I mapped that out first and had that ready for my first Alpha, the scene changed drastically by the end product but the general layout was there.

Originally I wanted there to be some sort of carnival area in the game. A place for players to mess around in, but since the game was focusing heavily on a story with the feedback from playtesters in my class I learnt that it really took away from it and took it out entirely but I hope to implement that in another game in the future. Once I finished the 1st person scene I started the Fungus sections. They were quite easy to do since I had all the dialogue written in my copy book so I just had to basically copy and paste it into Unity.

This game was without a doubt the hardest game to work on, to find the mix of Fungus and a 1st person section along with making sure players don't spend too long in one area and finally finding how long the overall game will end up being. I changed the ending multiple times since it was going on way too long, I cut up the dialogue and left just enough to make sure it made sense. I think the game works better as a game you play right after Poppets V even though my skills have improved since that game and it's noticeable different it works better if players know the characters.

Overall though I really did enjoy making this game and I would say that it was my best work in 3D by far, lighting has always been a problem for me in making games. My games always look either too bright or too dark but I think that this game has the best lighting of any of my 3D games. During the next few months I am going to focus on lighting in 3D spaces since I feel it is really important, it is what makes the difference from a good looking game to a GREAT looking game. I don't know If I'll mix Fungus and 3D spaces again for a while since I found them very difficult to mix and the loading times between the two weren't the best for gameplay, so until I find a way to do loading screens I will focus on one or the other.

• Liam Conneely (Leem)