The playable character named Q wakes up in a world and doesn't know what's going on. Why is it raining and what is to be done?

Throughout the various levels of the game Q comes across a number of inhabitants that hide from the rain beneath their hats. After bringing them back to their homes each of them tells a small part of what happened to the world: Apparently, the plug of the world has been opened and Q has to find it and close it again to make the rain stop.

The biggest obstacle: The rain of course. It makes everything wet. If Q gets too wet, they can't go on anymore and the level starts again.

Mysterious Rain is an absolutely nonviolent game that can be played by anyone (above the age of 4 or 5, I guess...) regardless age or gender.

To move forward in the game, the player has to rescue the inhabitants while solving riddles that revolve around managing Q's wetness by building shelters and using items that increase Q's resistance against the rain.

I was inspired mainly by the games „Monument Valley“ and „Machinarium“, both of them free of violence and with an innovative setting.

One day Q wakes up in a nameless world. It's a mountainous landscape that seems very rainy. After Q wanders around some time, they discover some deserted houses and ask themself, who might live therein. As the game/story progresses, Q finds out that the world is populated by people that are smaller than Q and are all wearing hats. The curious thing: These inhabitants seem very frightened and rendered helpless by the rain, so they don't see any other solution as to hide under the hats and wait for the rain to stop. As Q comes along, they deem them their saviour and follow Q through the rain, back to their houses. Relieved for having been saved, every inhabitant tells Q a tiny bit about what happened to the world and what has to be done to make the rain stop.

The player experiences this story only by playing the game. There's no introduction or anything similar so that the player feels as Q would feel: Thrown into a strange, unknown world without any knowledge of what has to be done. The concept is entirely explorative.

To avoid making the player feel helpless, the first levels are very easy and obvious. This way, the player learns the mechanics of the game by themself and in a continuous learning process advances to higher levels that are more difficult.

The main character of „Mysterious Rain“ is Q. Q is a genderless person who has a yellow hat. The hat glows to indicate that Q is fine and can be used as storage for items that Q collects.

We don't know much about Q, but they seem driven by the curiosity to explore the unknown world and the desire to help its inhabitants. Throughout their journey into the unknown, Q has to prove their courage numerous times.

Q's biggest antagonist is the endless rain. The longer Q is exposed to the rain, the weaker they get. If they don't find shelter or something similar that saves Q from the rain, they will have to take time to heal first, and start the task they were doing again.

The player controls Q, the main character, with the arrow keys of the keyboard. No other means of control (e.g. clicking things with the mouse) are needed. Every item or NPC that Q needs to interact with is activated or collected just by colliding with the object.

After every goal in one level is reached (i.e. colliding with different objects in the right order without getting completely wet), the player is „teleported“ into the next level, and so on, until the final level. The gameplay is a stringent forthcoming in the story that the player undergoes to discover all the secrets of the unknown world.

The world of „Mysterious Rain“ is a large greenish ball, thus it's a closed system. It's only „hole“ to the universe is normally closed with a plug. However through some kind of ominous circumstance, this plug has been opened so that the rain from the outside universe can fall through.

Q (and thus the player) doesn't know all of that and just notices that they've been thrown into that unknown world where it continues to rain. Through rescuing the inhabitants of that greenish ball-world, Q gets to know more and more about the world and finds out that they have to find that plug and close it again to finally save the day.

Enemies - the rain - puddles - wetness in general

Friends inhabitants (see Non-Player-Character)

Prolonging time interval until 100% wetness: - raincoat - umbrella - waterproofing spray

Enabling to cross wet terrain: - rain boots - boat - raft - waders

The life energy of Q is equivalent with their wetness. If Q's dryness equals 0% (= wetness 100%), the level starts again. The dryness can be increased in-game by seeking shelter or building one in the first place.

To increase Q's resistance against the rain, the player can find several useful items (see mechanics)

In each level, Q has to rescue one inhabitant (NPC) that tells a bit of what has happened to the world after being rescued. Afterwards, Q has succeeded and can proceed to the next level.

In every level, Q has to find one or more NPCs that are inhabitants of the world. Each inhabitant has a house that he wants to get back to in order to be safe from the rain.

While holding out in the rain, the NPCs hide under their hats (this was inspired by the film „Third Star“ in which an old man says: „Men used to still wear hats everyday, but the world has changed!“). When Q comes across an NPC hiding under their hat, they trust Q to rescue them, emerge from their hat and follow Q through the rain.

The prototype is an introductory level. In the left part of the level there's an inhabitant hiding under their hat; their house is on the upper right part. Q also comes across a broken-down bus stop next to the ladder to the NPC's house that can't be used as a shelter. A lying about hammer can be used to fix that. After having fixed the bus stop shelter, Q can take the NPC, re-dry them both under the shelter and afterwards get up the ladder and bring the NPC back to their house. Goal reached!

To build this level, I first implemented the most basic mechanics of Q moving around (via the arrow-keys) and getting wet by the rain and getting dry again when rain doesn't hit them. The next step was to animate the sprite of Q (walk-cycle, idle animaton, climbing-animation).

Having done that I really built the level that consists of the landscapes, camera, lights, sprites, etc. in Unity. This I found rather intuitive and no major problems occurred except for some problems with colliders that didn't always work as I wanted them to. But those could thankfully be solved with the help of Grit and some logical thinking :)

Almost every object that plays a role in the level (the NPC, the bus-stop-shelter, the ladder, etc.) has its on controller script. Sometimes it was hard for me to figure out into which script I had to put the code I wanted to be referred to. I'm sure there would have been an easier/cleaner way for some of the solutions I found, but that's the process of learning to code, I guess.

When I recap the course, I can say that I really learned a lot. Grit gave us a good introduction into the basics of game design as well as the basics of using the Unity game engine and writing scripts for our projects with Java Script. As I had only one course this semester and had a rather elaborate idea about what I wanted to create as a game project, the course was very well feasible for me.

I must say however that maybe it's not that much of a good idea to make a course with the goal of both creating a game project and learning the basics of programming in Java Script. If you have three or four courses as our curriculum suggests, the outcome will likely be either a good game with weak code or a good piece of code within a weakly designed game. Don't get me wrong: I'm very much an advocate for courses without requirements regarding coding knowledge and the goal to teach the very basics of a programming language. I just think that maybe the intent of creating a Game Prototype in addition to learning how to code is very ambitious for 10 Credits.

Another thing that I'm a bit disappointed about is the fact that although the course was originally planned to make good of the coding deficit of the female students in our interface design program, there were 3 female attendees that couldn't show a prototype they coded themselves or any prototype whatsoever. It seems that the course was not encouraging enough to stick with learning to code. I myself must admit: If I hadn't had help from my boyfriend (with extensive explanation) every time I couldn't figure out a coding problem myself, I probably wouldn't have ended the course or would have had a rather dysfunctional prototype at the end.