Roles: Team Leader, Level Designer and Writer
Tools Used: Unity, C#
- The theme given to us was “Energy”, so our team took that literally and made a game targeted at younger audiences that taught practical applications of various forms of energy. Level design and the art-style in general was heavily inspired by Nitrome flash games of old.
- Since the game was targeted at a younger audience, a big challenge was trying to keep the game simple enough to not be frustrating. This meant including things like:
- Simpler jumps
- Forgivable checkpoint systems
- Puzzles that were in a safe environment
- Surprisingly, a bit of unfairness. According to one of our lectures about target audiences, younger audiences like it when the game “tricks” you. Such as a button killing you when they normally help you
- I also did the writing for a “helper” named Tessa who would speak with the player by means of a little textbox at the bottom of the screen. This was used to help the player, explain concepts, remind players to use all of an ability, and finally to be a bit snarky.
- The main challenge of this was to place and test every instance of a “Tessa Activation” manually. This included making sure to activate a text line if the player intentionally went off path, or when a puzzle would end up in a similar spot reminding the player about their abilities every time they went there.
