This is often considered the worst game ever made.
And if you’ve never heard of it before, it’s called ET the Extra-Terrestrial.
The game did so bad that they actually had to dump copies of it into a landfill since
no one would buy it.
But as a game developer, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was a good game
underneath this rushed mess.
So here’s the challenge: With a gameplay and graphics overhaul, can I turn this game
into something actually good or is ET doomed to be forever a bad game?
To quickly summarize, the objective of ET is actually really simple: collect 3 pieces
of a broken telephone so ET can phone home.
And all really you do is search wells until you get lucky and find one of the phone pieces.
But the game has tons of issues: it’s really hard to get out of the wells, the instructions
just aren’t clear at all, and there’s just way more issues that I’ll show you.
But I’m confident I can make this game into something good.
In fact, I think you’ll be surprised to see how much I actually improve it.
My journey started with me messaging someone on Discord and asking them if they could make
me an ET model.
Unfortunately, there were busy, but they’ll make an appearance back in this story later
on.
It actually ended up working out though because I got lucky and found an awesome ET model
online.
And not only is ET 3D but he’s also rightfully brown.
Which I feel like I shouldn’t have to mention except for some reason he’s green in the
Atari version.
You’ll see this is only one of many strange decisions in the original game.
Based on what I found online, the game’s supposed to take in a place in a forest.
This is actually really easy to do in Unity and just involves adding some trees and making
leave particle effects.
I originally made up my mind I wouldn’t add any wells to this game but for the sake
of it, I tried adding one.
Since ET gets stuck in the well, I had to give him the ability to levitate.
The wells really sucked though and I knew I could do better so I scrapped them.
But I did leave the levitating.
Only with a slight adjustment, now an energy bar will deplete every time you levitate.
And you’ll fall if it runs out.
Now you might be wondering, why does ET even need to levitate if I removed wells from my
game?
Well for a couple good reasons: the first being to avoid this SWAT guy.
To be fair, this isn’t a totally original idea.
I didn’t mention but in the Atari game, there’s a guy in yellow who, apparently
is an FBI agent, and he tries to capture you.
I wanted something like that in my game but mine looks cooler and you can levitate into
the trees to lose him.
The whole forest is actually a nav mesh map so that actually allows the SWAT guy to smartly
avoid trees while chasing you.
And if you think this is cool so far,
you should totally subscribe right now.
Or else I’ll have to send that SWAT guy to find you.
And while you were doing that, I added some radioactive Reese’s Pieces.
They’re famously in the movie and they’re also in the original game.
I made mine radioactive so they’re easier to see and if you get one, it’ll restore
your energy so you can levitate some more.
My goal with this game is to stay true to the original but fix all of its flaws.
One of those being the phone pieces in the Atari game are randomly placed in wells and
it relies totally on luck to find them.
So I’m going to make that better.
If you remember the guy who I messaged on Discord earlier, his schedule freed up and
he was super awesome and made me these broken phone piece models.
You’ll have to find all 3 of them like the original but the phone pieces show up on your
mini-map so you can easily spot them.And using fancy math, it also displays your distance
to the nearest phone piece.
So unlike the original game, you’re not aimlessly wandering looking for the phone
pieces.
I did mention earlier that ET levitating had a couple uses.
So here’s the other use: Once you get all 3 phone pieces, you call home and your space
ship picks you up.
The experience totally sucks because you have to find a special spot on the map to be picked
up and there’s no real clear directions how to find it.
But this was actually really easy to improve.
I found a model of the actual ship from the movie and placed it in the trees.
Once you get all 3 phone pieces, you phone home and get directed to your spaceship.
Here’s the kicker though, it’s up in the air so you need to have enough energy to levitate
towards it.
I made a small fire trail effect and if you reach the ship, ET flies back home.
Unfortunately, if you’re not so lucky and get caught, you’ll have to restart the game.
I wanted to be a completionist so I made a menu and added a bunch of sound effects.
I really believe my version fixes a lot of the issues the original game faced and the
graphics are looking pretty nice too.
But you can try the game for yourself below and let me know what you think.
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