YEAR 3 - BA3a - Reddit Secret Santa Gecko Fencing

I signed up for Reddit's yearly secret santa this year and my matched participant was into videogames so I decided to make them one.

2 of their main interests were their pet Gecko, and Fencing, which they'd been competing in for 5 years. So I made them a 2 player game about geckos fencing.

I used a different code structure to what I normally use in these kind of games because I wanted to test it out for use in my end of year project. I used a state machine which essentially locks the character to whatever action they're currently performing until it's finished. This allows me to get fluid animations in because I know exactly how long any action will take to complete. It does cause the game to feel a bit stiffer though because I have taken some of the control away from the player.


It was important that I got the proper fencing technique into the game since the person I was making for is such an expert in the sport. I used THIS video guide to fencing as a reference and tried to emulate the way they walk and lunge in the game. I programmed it into the game that the character should make a full step before they're allowed to stop moving so as to mirror the way fencers do it in real life.

I added a few more moves like the jump and roll to give the players a bit more variety in how to approach the enemy.

I used a few reference images when pixeling the character. The defining features of the crested gecko are the shape of the head, the eye and the lighter mouth as well as the webbed toes. I was going for a minimal atari style for the game but I tried to get as many of these features across as I could with the resources I had.

This project has been useful so far as testing the new programming style. I'll think I'll apply it partially to SpaceNinja for specific actions that I want the player to have to commit to; those actions will have nice animations.