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.

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Nesting Instinct

During an ongoing storm, you (a flying squirrel) and your babies have taken shelter in the nest. Although as the storm continues, your babies grow hungry. In order to feed them you must go outside into the storm.

Developed: April 2018 - May 2018

My Role: Project Lead, Designer

Type: University Project (team of 9)

DESIGN DECISIONS AND PROCESSES

Nesting Instinct, was a university group project based around the idea of home. The game presents home as a place of safety, yet requiring the player to leave their comfort zone in order to feed their flying-squirrel babies.

There are 2 distinct areas in the game. The nest and the outside. The nest is calm and warm, while outside is dark, cold and daunting. There were various different ways these 2 feelings were accomplished.

Nest

• Soft, orange colours to emphasise that this is a warm place.
• No ambient storm noises, just calm guitar music.

Outside

• No music, just ambient wind, rain and thunder noises.
• A dark purple atmosphere, with stark lighting.
• Dark fog covering the ground, with red eyes fading in and out to give the player a sense of being watched.
• An ominous, red moon.
• Snakes hiding in some trees, which puts the player on their toes.

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.

Country Car

This is a remake of an old 1982 Atari game, Barnstorming, in the style of the famous American painter, Edward Hopper. You play as a car, driving out from the large city to your new country home. Avoid obstacles, while going through gas stations to get to your destination.

Developed: October 2017

My Role: Solo Development

Type: University Project

 

Design Decisions and Process

From early playtests, it was obvious that people did not know that they had to go through the gas stations to win the game. So to communicate this mechanic without directly telling them, a gas station was placed directly in-front of the player at the start of the game. This caused them to almost always go through it.

Re-creating Edward Hopper's realistic art style was something I struggled to figure out early on. Eventually though, I went with a low poly approach, theming it to the 1930's. This was done by making the textures less saturated and having an old-timely font. Overall, I believe that even though it doesn't feature realistic painted visuals, it still relates quite a bit to Edward Hopper.

The main correlations to the artist though, was done through the setting. All things Edward Hopper painted like trains, looking out of windows, countrysides, gas stations, etc, were implemented into the game. A main aspect of his paintings was looking out of windows, which the camera appears to do in-game. Lighting was another element Hopper fondly painted. In the game there are 3 levels, each with a different level of lighting and visual style. Dusk, Dawn and Midnight. This creates both a different visual style, as well as altering the game. At Dawn, there are more potholes and at Midnight, vision is limited. These small differences create distinguishable levels, for a project we only had a few weeks on.