Frederico Nevard
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Game Designer
During the pre-production stage of the project, we needed a way for everyone within the team to understand the core of our game. A One-Page GDD allowed me to outline the core pillars and principles that our game would follow in an easily digestible package.
Brainstorming
Using collaboration tools like Miro gave myself free reign to come up with gameplay ideas for the project, I had many different ideas along with pitching them and trying them out with the team. In the end the majority of ideas dont make it past the concept stage however having a tool like this allows so many ideas to be tested.
Ultimately, we decided to move in a simple direction with the game, picking 3 of the original 5 ideas we had for levels and only a handful of the 16 items we had originally planned. This kept the game in scope and let us instead focus on the execution and game polish.
Gameplay and Levels
We wanted to focus on simple controls and a simple gameplay loop. The game only uses 3 buttons for gameplay: Left-Stick, A and Right-Trigger. This allows players of all skill levels to more easily pick up and play our game. The game is designed to be a Couch Co-op game so playing with friends is the intended experience and keeping controls simple means even non-gamers can get used to the gameplay.
In addition, the core gameplay loop is very simple: The players need to keep the rover in the middle of the screen fueled with fuel rods while defending themselves from enemies with resources they find in the environment. This further emphasises the simple loop we wanted to keep the players in.
For the game levels, I wanted to focus on a shorter and fast-paced experience, specifically between the 2-3 minute mark, and no more than 5 minutes for our most amateur players. This was important to me, as for a high-score game, making mistakes can be frustrating and players wanting to maximise the score are likely to reset more often. Minimising that 'time wasted' between runs was paramount during development and through testing we discovered players enjoyed a shorter level structure, despite having less overall content, because it was easier to reset and get a higher score if they chose to do so. Furthermore, players who didn't care about getting a good score were happy that the level was short and didn't overstay its welcome.
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To add variety across the game levels we made sure to add unique features or 'gimmicks' to give identity to each environment. These can range from bubbles floating around, picking up items and players, to having enemies encased in ice which players have to carefully work around. Adding variety to these levels gives each of them an identity and allows players to pick what level they prefer, if they enjoy a particular level gimmick or dislike another they can choose what level to play. It also kept the gameplay loop feeling fresh.
During the creation of the Tutorial, I decided to go with a short but linear implementation, taking the player step by step through the interactions of the game. While typically I would consider this a bad approach to tutorialisation, in this instance I felt it was the most effective way to communicate the controls to the player while also throwing in some of the game's humour and corporate atmosphere to make it feel diegetic, as if the player is being onboarded to a new company. In addition, the tutorial is very short (1-2 minutes) and completely optional for the players.
UX Design
Late on in development we wanted to focus on polish and user experience so I made my first steps into UX design and an UX design tools. My program of choice was Figma as its well known and had many tutorials online to get me started.
I created a mock-up for a settings menu that unfortunately didn't make it into the game due to time constraints, however it let me visualise and understand what players would expect from a settings menu, along with gaining further insight into what creates good UX through my research into the topic. In addition, this skillset allows me to showcase ideas to others in the team more effectively and is a medium of design I'm very excited to explore further.