Welcome Home Ila

Made in Unity (C#), Assets created in Blender, 2020

This piece is dedicated to Ila, my grandmother who passed away on October 31st, 2020.

I created this game when the coronavirus starting affecting the whole world, and people could not travel to other countries. Ila was sick and wanted to return to America to live with her family. She was in India, and could not return due to travel restrictions. I made this piece in hopes that the restrictions would be lifted and she would be able to return home.

There are three different stages. Each stage is a phrase I would say to Ila when she returns. There are hearts at the top that return the player to their last position if hit. This is to symbolize my heart, knowing I could not go to India and see Ila. The player must launch themselves into the stage and navigate through it. Each section of the stage is dark until the player touches it. This is a metaphor for how lost I felt at the time. The goal is to get to Ila, which takes you to the next round. After the final round, the player arrives at an ending screen saying that Ila made it home.

This game’s mechanics are very similar to angry birds. Ila loved playing that game so much that she played every single angry birds game on the market. My hope was to get her to play this game too.