Alien Burger Maker

You are a chef in an alien burger restaurant. Make odd and unique burgers for the hungry aliens before the destruction of their planet.

Developed: June 2018 - August 2018

My Role: Project Lead, Designer, Programmer

Type: University Project (team of 3)

DESIGN DECISIONS AND PROCESSES

Alien Burger Maker, was a game we made for Liminal VR. They make short experiences to create certain emotions. For this project, we were told to make an energising experience. Something that people can play to make them feel pumped and ready for their day.

This was done through a number of different ways.

Gameplay

• With the ingredients falling constantly, the player is always grabbing them and serving burgers to the aliens.
• The addition of needing to squirt sauce onto burgers and add the top bun, encourages movement of the arm.

Progression

• The game has more and more customers come to the window at once as the game continues on, increasing the speed and multitasking that the player has to do.
• Ingredients spawn and fall faster as the game progresses, emphasising the speed.
• At the end, the game finishes off with a grand finale. The restaurant launches into the air, drills through the planet and then watches it as it explodes.

Theme

• The game has a wacky/abstract/hyper-realistic theme to it. This takes the player out of the world they know and puts them into one with different rules and unknown expectations.
• It's a very colourful game. With the aliens, ingredients, environment, etc. This is a very saturated and fun game to look at.

Read Post Mortem

Gatho at 9:00

You're hosting a small party at 9:00pm. It's 8:49pm and you're not prepared. Quickly drive to pick up your friends who cannot drive, shop for necessities and calm your friends down when they message you. You don't have time to lose.

Developed: February 2018 - March 2018

My Role: Solo Development

Type: University Project

DESIGN DECISIONS AND PROCESS

Gatho at 9:00, was made for a university assignment where we had to create a game based of a real life experience. I chose the feeling of being unprepared and rushing to get stuff sorted for a party. Although not directly a reflection of the real life experience, the game emphasises the feelings you have in a short, exciting experience.

There are various different "tasks" or "scenes" in the game, which the player has to accomplish in order to move onto the next one. I wanted each of them to have a different mechanic, to create the sense of disorder and increase the pressure on the player. Each of these scenes encourages pressure and anxiety for the player in different ways.

• The Driving scene, has the player thinking fast, finding the right letter on the keyboard to finish as fast as possible.
• The Friends House scene, has the player spamming the space-bar, hopefully increasing their heartbeat slightly and encouraging motor-functions which can be seen in the real world equivalent as in-patience.
• The Messaging scene, has the player spamming any key on the keyboard to reply to their friend. This implies the sense of urgency and drills home the fact that failing to finish the game will disappoint the player's friends.
• Finally, the Shop scene, has the player hastily looking for produce in a small shop. This can encourage anxiety, in-turn; having the player perhaps making bad decisions or missing obvious items.

Other elements in the game which can encourage the intended experience are:

• Music. This was done by finding a fast paced track on Incompetech (Darkling) and then adding a ticking clock every 1 second. Not only does the music encourage fast behaviour, but the ticking implies that there's no time to lose.
• Popping Text. Each scene in the game has coloured text which pops in and out. They provide information and context to the scene, as well as encouraging the player on how to act.