Top Heavy Game Blog

 

Top Heavy-12/16/2025-1/9/2026

Pre Production

Note

This is an unfinished game that is no longer in production. This was a two-person game, where only one person did any work, that person being me.

Description

Top Heavy is a Foddian game where the premise of the game is that you got hired at a warehouse to deliver packages. The company has odd rules where they make you deliver the packages on your feet while being in a constant handstand. Your instructor is a secrate russian spy investigating the company for its odd behaviours.

Mechanics

Left/Right mouse button lifts the designated hand.

Move the mouse to move the current lifted hand.

Click both and hold both buttons at the same time to jump.

My Contribution

I did all the scripting, level design, custom physics, modeling, character controller, and sound design.

Post Production

Game Links

Problems & Failures

This game only had one problem; it was pretty early into development, but the most fundamental part of the game had a large issue: the character controller, the character controller got so complex with so many edge cases, I tried solving this by adding a Unity styled ECS system, which if you know anything about Unities ECS, you would know its not really and ECS, however; they do have there Dots system, that is there ECS. Off the topic of ECSs, this character controller got so complex, it was just so annoying to work on, and I had been working on it for days on end, with little to no progress.

Fixes & Improvements

I think the character controller just did have good state management, so if I end up coming back to this idea, thats definitly somthing I would properly add, to make sure everything works correctly.

Strong Points

The game used an IK system, despite what I wrote in my previous blogs, about using whats available, I ended up writing my own IK system, because the Unity animation rigging package, worked, only sometimes, I'm not sure what the internals looked like, but sometimes it would just stop working, stop updating, so I just decided to write my own.

The character model was a strong point of the game. It looked really good, especially for this project, which hardly even had an MVP. 

The box physics was fine, I wish I had made it inside of the Update function because there was some visual glitching with things not syncing correctly, but I didnt really bother me that much, on a lower end device, I'm sure this woud have been more of an issue, so I would have needed to come back to it, however visually the boxes looked pretty good, and moved with the player correclty.

I implemented custom physics for this game; it was pretty simple stuff, however, this bit me back later into development with the character controller, because you could jump onto a platform, then the platform would react to you jumping on it, then a force would be applied to the platform, and this caused even more edge cases. I don't know if the custom physics was even a smart idea. I'm not really sure how I could not have done it, at the time, and currently,y as I'm writing this, it seems like the only viable option, but normally I'm against writing custom physics, however it is worth noting, that Units physics engine SUCKS, and not that we are on the topic of things that Unity suckes at, we have there shadow cascading system, I hate it, its so unreliable, and so unpredictable.

What I learned

I learned how to properly handle IK; however, it may be a good idea to understand why Unity's animation rigging package would just randomly stop working, because I'd much rather prefer to use that system than my own.

I have never been good at level design, but I learned a very commonly used method for blocking out levels, "Gray Boxing", as you can see inside of the images, and vidoes provided, I added some gray boxing, just to get a general feel for the level, then I would go back and actually make it look nice, however I did not reach that stage of development.

Personal Reflection

The project was fine; it was a fine idea. I'm not sure how actually fun the game would have been to play. Mid-project, I realized that I wanted to make a faster-paced game; however, I couldn't think of any ideas that went well with doing handstands, and that could also work without me rewriting the whole character controller. Looking back on it, skateboarding could have been a cool idea, and I wouldn't even need an IK controller for the character if it was permanilty locked to the skateboard.