Concept: Flies, Monsters, and the Venus Flytrap
Rather than having the player simply destroy enemies, I imagined the monsters of a Venus flytrap Queen who had trapped flies inside their bellies. When the player shoots a monster, the goal is not to harm it, but rather to liberate the flies trapped within.
So, with each successful hit, a swarm of flies bursts from the monster’s belly—visually suggesting that the player is helping, not hurting. This felt like a more thoughtful narrative balance, allowing for action gameplay without glorifying violence.
These monsters serve a queen—the “mother flytrap”—a physical computing plant in the real world. As the player defeats more of these monsters in-game, the number of freed flies is mapped to data used to drive a DC motor that gradually opens the flytrap plant in reality. This concept of connecting digital action to physical consequence is central to my interest in virtual-physical interaction.
Game Mechanics: Health and Feedback
Each monster has three lives, but early testing made it clear that players had no clear visual cue of the monster’s remaining health. I didn’t want to use floating numbers or health bars above their heads—it didn’t suit the aesthetic or the narrative. Instead, I introduced a colour transition system using materials and shaders.
Colour Feedback System Traffic Lights
- Monsters start with a vivid green body, representing vitality and their flytrap origin.
- With each hit, the colour fades:
- First hit: duller green.
- Second hit: reddish-green.
- Third hit (final): fully red.
This gives players immediate visual feedback on the monster’s state without UI clutter, reinforcing the game’s narrative metaphor.
Implementing the Visual Effects
Material Cloning
To change the colour of each monster individually (rather than globally), I cloned their material at runtime:
csharpCopyEditbodyMaterial = bodyRenderer.material;
This creates a unique instance per zombie. If I used shared material, all zombies would change color together, which I discovered during testing and debugging.
Colour Transition Logic
I wrote a function UpdateBodyColor() that calculates the colour based on the monster’s remaining health. It uses:
csharpCopyEditMathf.Clamp01(health / 3f);
Color.Lerp(Color.red, Color.green, healthPercent);
This smoothly transitions from red (low health) to green (full health), depending on how many lives the monster has left.
Particle Effects: Flies – Stop motion animation aesthetics
To visualise the flies escaping, I used Unity’s Particle System.
- I created a sprite sheet with 16 fly frames in a 4×4 grid.
- I used the Texture Sheet Animation module to play these frames in sequence, creating a stop-motion animation effect.
- The particle system is parented to the monster’s belly and only plays when the monster is hit.
I made sure to disable looping and prevent it from playing on start. That way, it only triggers when called from code (in the TakeHit() function).
This was an experimental but rewarding technique, simulating complex animation using a simple sprite sheet. It aligns well with the fantasy aesthetic, even though the flies are 2D in a 3D world.
Unity Implementation Notes
- Each monster is a prefab. This made it easier to manage changes and maintain consistency across the game.
- The
TakeHit()method:- Reduces health.
- Plays an animation.
- Plays a sound (roar, hit, or death).
- Triggers the flies’ particle effect.
- Calls
UpdateBodyColor()to change the visual appearance.
- Once health reaches 0:
- The monster “dies”.
- The NavMesh agent stops.
- A death animation and sound are played.
- The object is destroyed after a short delay.
Bridging Physical and Digital Worlds
The core concept I’m exploring here is the flow of data between virtual and physical space. I love the idea of the player doing something in the game that directly affects the real world. By linking monster deaths to the opening of the physical flytrap plant via a DC motor, the project becomes more than just a game—it becomes an interactive experience across dimensions.
I see this as a kind of “virtual twin” concept, but not just a visual replica. It’s a data-driven relationship, where progress in the virtual world controls mechanical outcomes in the physical world.
This idea is loosely inspired by Slater’s concept of presence—how sensory data in one space (physical) can be reconstructed or mirrored in another (virtual), and vice versa. It’s this bidirectional flow of meaning and data that fascinates me.