OVERVIEW
Honey’s Cave Game is a classic-style, tile-based adventure where players guide a hungry bear through a dangerous forest maze, collecting food while dodging spooky predators. This game challenged both my technical and design side. On the design side, I created the storyline and characters, designed the sprites and animations, and the overall visual system of the game. Technical wise, I built the game from the ground up in C and optimized it for the GBA environment. I had to consider factors such as collision mapping, game states, and HUD (Heads Up Display) logic.
KEY TOPICS
Sprite animation and character movement
Collision maps and game physics
Game state logic and progression
HUD/UI design (lives, score, level indicators)
Sound integration and looping SFX
Power-up mechanics and game balancing
Storyline
You are a bear trying to survive in the forest and gather food to prepare for winter. The forest includes several yummy and healthy foods including fruit and vegetables. Be careful, there are spooky ghosts, who increase in power and speed as you go through different forest levels! To defend yourself, you can throw magical stones at the ghosts! There are also special collectables that you can collect to get power ups to enter power mode for a limited time, including:
Immunity to ghost attacks
Enhanced stones that instantly defeat enemies
Game Structure
I designed the game to have the following logical flow: Start → Instructions → Game → Pause → Win/Lose → Restart. To win, you must collect 2/3 of the level's food. If you run out of lives, you lose and reset to level 1.
I also included a smooth scrolling HUD that stays static and displays the current game state. This includes:
🐻 Bear icon = Lives
⭐ Star = Level
💎 Diamond = Score
There are 2 total levels, where the second level includes more ghosts and obstacles.
What I Built
This game was built entirely in C for the GBA. I designed sprite animation, collision detection, game state logic, and level progression from the ground up. This includes:
Smooth scrolling backgrounds and a custom collision map for maze navigation
A working HUD with score, lives, and level indicators that update in real time
Two full levels with increasing difficulty and a working win/lose loop
Power-ups (gift boxes) that change the bear's abilities and add variety to gameplay
Custom sound effects and music, plus visual polish to bring the whole thing together
Learnings
I learned a lot while developing this game, both technical wise and design wise! This was my first time working with an emulator, and for a large scale C based project. I had to think a lot about organizing game state, encoding game logic, and handling edge cases.
Design wise, I learned a lot about story telling through interactive medium. I wanted the player to be as invested in this hungry bear as I was! Designing sprites under the constraints of limited pixels was a unique process for me, and I learned a lot about stylizing designs under graphical constraints to make a cohesive design system for the game. Overall, this project was both fun and fulfilling!
