Ages ago I built a small Unity editor extension that makes its way into every project I fire up. It allows you to run functions in a game object’s components through a GUI. I recognize how excruciatingly dull that sentence is, so let me convince you that this is something you need with an example.

Suppose you’re developing a Breakout clone. Each brick gets a component with an Explode function that, well, makes it explode.

using UnityEngine;

class Brick : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Explode ()
    {
        // TODO: add impressive fireball
        Debug.Log("Exploding!");
        Destroy(gameObject);
    }
}

Nice job. Let’s test your handiwork. There are plenty of ways to run the function, but Methodic provides the easiest. Click the brick game object, open Window > Methodic, hit “Invoke”, and voilà: your brick detonates in a fiery blast.

No extra code necessary. Even groovier, if your function takes arguments, you can specify these using familiar checkboxes and text fields and colour pickers.

Public, private, static, or instance function, Methodic runs them all. You can even execute functions when Unity is in edit mode.¹ Still yawning? A video sells it better.

If this looks like something your game development environment pines for (or if you want to make me a wealthy man), you can purchase Methodic for $10 on the Unity Asset Store. I can’t promise that you’ll make better games with it, but you might, and is that an opportunity you can ignore? Not in this economy.

Assets for my Breakout clone from Kenney’s Puzzle Pack 2. Thanks Kenney!