Eliott BlachaDeveloper and designer

Make Me a World

A toy about shaping terrain. Paint hills and hollows with a brush, and a bouncing ball rolls wherever the ground sends it.

Year
2023
Context
School project, ICAN
Role
Game programmer, game artist, game designer
Built with
C#, Unity, Blender, shaders
Link
Play on itch.io
Green rolling hills with cloud-like trees and orange mushrooms, seen from above.

The toy

A second-year brief at ICAN: build a toy around a single core system, starting from an AI-generated image.

There is no win condition. You deform the terrain with a brush, and a ball, with the camera locked on it, bounces across whatever landscape you make, through a bright, childlike world of animals, music and small interactions. It was a chance to take on several roles in a small team, on a real deadline.

A herd of round black and white sheep on striped green hills.

My part

Brush system
The brush that deforms the terrain: the core mechanic of the toy.
Terrain shader
Highlights edges, peaks and dips so the shape of the ground reads at a glance.
Game art
Every 3D element in the environment, modelled and textured.
A circular brush raising mounds on a flat test terrain as its size changes.
Brush size and strength, in an early test scene.
A checkered test terrain deformed into hills.
First terrain deformation test.
Green dunes with contour stripes that follow the shape of the terrain.
The terrain shader: contour bands make every slope readable.
An orange ball resting at the foot of a grassy hill topped by a single tree.
Sheep and mushroom trees on a sunny meadow.
The Make Me a World title screen: press space to start.
Title screen.
Next projectGame jam, 2023God’s InternA one-week jam game with a physical controller: players tilt a real table together to steer a ball and shield their characters from meteors.