GAME 1303 — Tier 8: Signature Mechanics

Eight scripts, each one the thing that makes a particular student's game that game rather than a generic one. Small tier, high impact — these are the scripts worth pair-programming with their owners.

Scripts/
  ApepsTrial/       CameraModeSwitcher, ModeSwitchTrigger
  MythoClash/       MonsterEntry, ExperienceWallet, EncounterManager
  CommissionWitch/  Recipe, RecipeChecker
  Instructor/       MultiTaskStation

Apep's Trial (Lazaro) — the camera switch

The player object carries all three control schemes at once (FirstPersonController, PlayerController2D, TopDownMover) plus one Cinemachine camera per mode. Switching enables one controller, disables the others, raises that camera's priority, and lets Cinemachine blend. ModeSwitchTrigger is the doorway that calls it.

Two things to tell Lazaro directly:

  1. Prototype this on a flat grey box level before any art or level design. The mechanic either feels good or it doesn't, and he wants to know in week two, not week ten.
  2. Use the trigger's Reposition Player field to snap onto the 2D plane. Ending up off-plane and appearing to walk into the background is the classic bug in this kind of game.

MythoClash (Fozaan) — fight or skip

EncounterManager implements the pitch's rules exactly: beat a monster and earn Drachma; skip and the next draw is likelier to be nastier; skips are capped at 3. Monsters are MonsterEntry assets with a pantheon and a difficulty tier, and the draw is weighted toward the current threat tier rather than hard-gated — so a high threat makes tough monsters likely without making weak ones impossible.

ExperienceWallet honours the pitch's rule that Drachma can't be taken from you, while still allowing it to be spent on unlocking levels. Pick one currency system — this wallet or Tier 4's LevelProgress unlock costs — because two things meaning "Drachma" is a bug factory.

The design note for Fozaan: OnThreatLevelChanged exists so the risk of skipping is visible. A gamble the player can't see isn't a decision.

Commission Witch (Sylvia) — the recipe check

Straight off the instructor whiteboard: order received → gather ingredients → mix and recipe check. Recipe is the order (required ingredients, forbidden ones — the answer to "are there bad ingredients?" is yes — and an extras allowance). RecipeChecker grades each brew Perfect / Passable / Ruined / Failed and adds to counters brews_perfect, brews_passable, brews_ruined.

Those counters are what Tier 6's EndingSelector reads with Min Counter Value, so "different endings based on how many and which ingredients you collect" resolves without any new code.

Cephalopods in Space! (instructor demo) — MultiTaskStation

Several gauges drifting toward failure while the player runs between them. The whole game is one script, which makes it a good in-class live build: students can read the entire loop in five minutes and every field visibly changes how it feels. Eight arms, eight controls.

Tuning advice worth repeating to the class: start with drift rates so slow it's boring, then speed up until you're slightly panicked. That's the right value — and it's true of nearly every number in every game they're making.

Notes for the instructor