System Override (2023)
System Override is a single-player heist game where you disable the traps in front of your non-playable companion using the puzzles in your environment.
The game is being developed in Unreal Engine for PC and VR platforms. It is an end-of-year student project that we, an assorted band of 6 dubbed Version 6 Games, had the opportunity to showcase at 2023’s Oz Comic-Con, PAX Aus, and South by Southwest Sydney.
My role as 1 of 2 designers is to design effective sounds and feedback systems, engaging puzzles, informative test plans, and ensure documentation is accurate and up to date. Our design pipelines are heavily collaborative, and I often find myself proudly assisting the strengths and passions that everyone in V6 brings to the table.
Reflection
Early prototypes made it clear that System Override should be developed as a virtual reality game. We could not jump straight into VR because of assessment constraints so the game was designed for PC with a VR port in mind, and we bypassed those constraints by developing for both platforms, albeit with PC as the priority.
Feedback systems saw frequent iterations owing to the play environment’s layout and the lack of on-screen UI. We quickly learned that flashing arrows and directional sound cues were not enough to direct players to turn all the way around which, given the intentionally haphazard desk layout, wasn’t easily resolved. The how2hack.txt file is a light tutorial added to the pre-game menu to teach players – as a minimum – that puzzles exist in the environment. This initial prompt proved to pair nicely with arrows and sound cues to relate feedback with puzzles or, rather, things to interact with.
Sound effects were loosely grouped into prompts and reactions, with prompts to encourage an interaction and reactions to communicate the objective success or failure of that interaction. Every puzzle has at least 1 prompt and a positive reaction. Initially, negative reactions were not implemented to acclimate players using positive reinforcement. Sounds were then left untouched in the face of 2023’s Oz Comic-Con, PAX Aus, and South by Southwest Sydney – events where game audio would be mostly inaudible. A few sounds were added in late development and existing sounds were revised and polished to complement visual feedback.
In hindsight, icons should have been simpler to reduce confusion. For example, each puzzle icon could have been a unique, pulsing shape rather than a stylised image of the puzzle. Additional or revised sounds should have better stated “You got it wrong. Try again.” to keep players focused on what is coming instead of fumbling to learn what happened. Finally, the project’s initial test goals were too flexible. Each testing session solidified where development was at and determined where we wanted it to be for the next batch of tests, although the project’s goalposts were given too much room to drift because our initial and overarching project goals were too broad to test.
End of the Universe (2023)
Fly around your ever-expanding universe and shoot down the asteroids stunting its growth.
End of the Universe is the result of a 3-day game jam and was developed in Unreal Engine. The jam was undertaken to test the mettle of Version 6 Games, a then newly formed band of students, who were mostly inexperienced in the ways of Unreal.
I quickly found myself editing sounds and slapping visual feedback into the project, before jumping into visual scripting to use my limited experience with Blueprints.
Reflection
End of the Universe is both the game title and the jam prompt that birthed it. This was our first project working together and – for all bar myself – our first time developing in Unreal Engine. We quickly and cohesively fell into our preferred roles and worked through a few of Unreal’s onboarding kinks to prepare for our final student project.
The game lacks feedback and is functionally rough around the edges because of our inexperience in Unreal Engine. Pulsing icons and sound effects that alert the player to approaching asteroids and/or outlines that highlight those asteroids would benefit playability, as would polished player controls and more balanced asteroid positions. These improvements were noted and attempted during development, although could not be achieved at the time.
Take the Compliment (2023)
Drive around as a knee-height robot and hurl compliments at passersby. Keep your battery charged by complimenting in swift succession.
Take the Compliment is a solo project developed to learn Unreal Engine through practice. It is a compilation of learning experiences that has expanded the list of mistakes I can now prevent – touch wood.
Reflection
Assessment deliverables were met.
In a nutshell, my deliverables were to create a core gameplay loop that rewards in-game acts of kindness, and to not include acts of aggression or violence.
Intended play experience was delivered.
Gameplay is slightly chaotic with a sense of humour and focus on player movement. That said, I had intended for mastery over player movement to be more necessary than it is.
Core mechanic is not fun in isolation.
Point and click functionality is not uncommon and has been better implemented in existing games. I would have liked to experiment with alternative core mechanics, however lacked the technical ability to produce prototypes quickly.
Player score does not encourage or reward gameplay.
The score system was initially more creative, but it conflicted with the core mechanic by asking the player to stop complimenting pedestrians and, instead, leave the area to increase their score. I shelved the idea and opted for the standard approach of x points per interaction – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I would have loved to design an engaging score system or, more simply, implement a motive to encourage the player to increase their score.
Level environment does not add to the play experience.
The designed level only exists to fill out the game world. I had hoped to design a level that dynamically alters the play experience, but failed to consider the idea during the planning stage and chose to not prioritise revising the already functional level.
Level pacing and replayability was not considered in the planning stage.
Take the Compliment is an arcade-style game with low replayability and that is my largest gripe with this project. The lack of a motive to earn a score and the lightly planned level design are leading contributors to this gripe, however the problem is that I mistakenly thought I would not need to consider pacing because the game is endless. Difficulty scales to ensure the game cannot truly go on forever, but it scales with the intention of bringing the game to a close rather than ramping up the challenge or the fun.
Sound design was considered in post rather than the planning stage.
With the exception of using a robotic voice to accompany on-screen text, I did not consider how sounds could enhance the play experience until after the project was functionally complete.
Connections (2022)
The inhabitants of this land are disconnected from their hobbies and each other. Solve puzzles as a sentient marble to reconnect the people and tune in to mental wellbeing.
Connections is an end-of-year student project developed in Unity to promote methods of tuning in to mental wellbeing. It is the result of my first year studying at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment and was produced by an assigned group of 7 named Team Nanana.
My role was to design intuitive and thematically engaging puzzles, implement a non-linear narrative, and ensure assessment criteria and deadlines were met.
Reflection
Our goal was to develop a game that encourages players to tune into their mental wellbeing – that is, to think of the positives in their lives. Our approach was to design a non-linear narrative with branching dialogue and multiple-choice responses that recycle into NPC dialogue. Each character is isolated from the others by an unsolved puzzle and is looking for an object that another character has. These objects were intended to suggest mental wellbeing tools that players could experiment with, however shifted the game from a mental health project to a surface level fetch quest.
Connections can be broken down into quarters – pairings 1 through 3 and the finale – and can be tackled in any order. We conducted experiential tests by separating gameplay into the same quarters to better identify similarities and differences. As a result, we did not adequately test the high-level game loop that players experience and were unable to identify common bugs that diminish the experience.