Creating Scary Panda: A unique horror video game experience, aided by cost-free tools

Abstract

When the team set out to create a video game, there was a good number of ideas, all waiting to be transformed into reality. Ultimately, it was decided to create a horror video game with a bit of a "kawaii" aesthetic, where it was desired for it to stay close to its concept, yet have a way of standing out among the rest. As one of the team’s acquaintances is a huge fan of pandas and horror games, it helped make the decision to breathe Scary Panda: The Game into life. During the development process, the goal was to create something that manages to make itself stand out amongst the competition of an already greatly-saturated genre while remaining within the boundaries imposed by the genre. The team tried making everything within the available skill sets by themselves, from the bits of code responsible for movement all the way until a majority of the models seen in the game, which was definitely helped thanks to the many free tools (like Unity, Blender, Visual Studio, Mixamo). With many successfully implemented mechanics, some inspired by other games, understandably altered to fit into this game’s world, a one-of-a-kind game was created featuring not only core mechanics a player would expect from a horror game, but also some unusual for this type of game, borrowed from different genres.