Hippy Skate

Storyline

There's a feeling in skateboarding that's hard to describe. When you drop into a transition and roll up the walls, you're able to feel a tremendous build of energy that's a combination of muscle, gravity and momentum. It's a feeling that almost any skateboarder will confirm and understand but it’s very unrepresented in skateboarding games. With Hippy Skate, I tried to emulate, accent and simplify this mechanic. While all games are an illusion, Some games are able to achieve an authentic expression of physics that makes the player really understand and feel the movement. With hippy skate I built the rig from scratch in the engine out of primitive joints. This allowed me to let aspects of the character move and swing with the momentum at random so the animations don’t feel stiff or recycled. Also the character is programmed to animate with the environment rather than running a set animation. This makes the character look loose and realistically responsive to the environment. The explicitly nonviolent, and positive purpose of the game is to skate around collecting a set number of peace signs (like coins in most games) as quickly as possible. Gaining the speed, height, and rhythm to collect each of these peace signs is the challenge. In typical side scrolling games of this nature, a player is required to attempt the goal and if they fail the game will pause, player disappear, level rewinds and player is able to attempt again. Hippy Skate is set on a circular track called a pump track in skateboarding culture. With this type of track the player is able to attempt the goal, miss, keep moving for a quick attempt again and more flowy, endless style gameplay.