Game Design Question From A Rookie

Hey, first game. New to everything.
I got inspired, learned a bit of gimp and want to figure out how to realize my idea.

Could someone point me in the right direction for learning how to map a game like I have attached in the picture?

Each map would look like the picture attached. At the beginning of each map, you pick a path (left, middle, right) and then move forward and encounter whatever is along that path. Your character gets smaller into the distance until you eventually get to a new map and repeat the process.

I am presently going through tutorials and learning some of the basics, but am nowhere near getting to the info I need to start practically building my game. Could someone perhaps give me a bit of guidance to help get me going more efficiently on this project?

First question, is it possible to do this in 2d or would I have to make it 3d?

Thanks!

 

Hi! You could do that in 2D, but I think 3D will end up being simpler for your game. You can use 2D sprites in 3D environments; they're not only for 2D environments.

If you haven't done the tutorials at Unity Learn yet, I recommend the Unity Essentials series and then skip Junior Programmer and go through some of the Creative Core tutorials.

Others here may strong disagree with me, but consider using a visual scripting system such as Unity's Visual Scripting package or -- better yet for beginners -- PlayMaker, which is 50% off right now. PlayMaker is more approachable than Unity's Visual Scripting, and it has a lot of tutorials and an active community where you can ask for help.

Further down the road in your game dev journey, you'll probably find that it's more straightforward to write your own code. But, when you're first starting out, there's just so darn much to learn that visual scripting systems make a great stepping stone. You might even stick with them. Andrii Vintsevych, for example, makes his games entirely in PlayMaker. He's released several successful games on Steam that are rated Very Positive.

 

both ways are possible. I would also recommend a 3d approach but using 2d sprites for art because i think for beginner this will be intuitive way to work. Just my hunch, I've only ever done 3d projects, not 2d.

I'd also recommend start with visual scripting - anything to simplify the overall process and keep you productive is a big bonus. As necessity dictates, you can dive deeper into individual disciplines in the future. I think best way to manage information overload is to only learn new tools in order to solve specific problems that have come up naturally.

ultimately whether you go 2d or 3d or hybrid depends on many factors: what software you have, what skills you have, which workflow is most efficient for you, and what your desired aesthetic are probably the big decision factors.

 

Thanks for the advice. I've been learning a lot the past 24 hours. The advice to learn as I go is how I've been doing it, been modifying my game idea to fit with tools that I am learning.

I'm going to start heading through the tutorials. Thanks for the help!

 

@acieldau in my opinion unity always advertises itself with misleading sentences like "everyone can create games in no time with unity" but if you are a normal person the first step is never creating something own. You will first have to read the manual and learn some basics, do many tutorials, then vary them and after many practices and good knowledge about the manual you normaly can start create your first then not so buggy / ugly own game ^^. The good thing is, that unity has a great manual, many intresting and fun example projects and you can find an answer for nearly everything. I think the whole process can be pretty fun. But the steps to avoid frustration are 1. read the manual 2. do tutorials 3. vary tutorials / example projects 4. create your first game. If you start with step 4 it could be pretty frustrating for most people