PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHT
PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHT
July 2019 - November 2019
Maze Runner
“Maze Runner is a game that can entertain a single player, two players or four players exhibited in the MAGI EXPO 2019. Please help the slime to find the chest in the maze! The moving direction of the slime is controlled by four buttons (E, X, I, M). It’s an independent project that both game design and visual design were completed on my own. The main topic that I investigated is “one player’s action affect the others’ decision” The pixel art style was adopted when I worked on the visual design of the game elements.”
Genre: Maze Game, Mutiplayer
Engine: Unity
Platform: itch.io, PC, Mac
Project length: One semester, 12 weeks + 1 week to tidy up
Team size: I worked on it myself
Roles and Responsibilities
General Game Design
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Quickly built a few prototypes and tested them with some playtesters
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Researched on games of the same genre and with similar mechanics
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Designed game mechanics (the moving obstacles, the path of the maze and control of the character movement etc.) that creates challenges and encourages social interactions
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Level Design
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Designed the level
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Made use of different movement patterns of the obstacles and a narrow path in the maze to create challenges to the players
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Programmer
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Programmed the whole game with the visual programming language called PlayMaker
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Wrapped all the assets together as a playable game
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Fixed any bugs found in the playtests
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UI and Graphic Design
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Designed the characters, environment and props
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Worked on all the sprites in the game
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Designed the UI of the game
Research & Development
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This is the first studio project after I started my study at MAGI, RMIT in the first semester.
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Co-op Games
In Co-op games, players play together to achieve the same goal. Some famous examples of co-op games are Super Mario Brothers, Overcooked and Cuphead etc. Players play as separated individuals in these co-op games. Recently, a device called Octopad that splits an NES controller into eight gamepads with a single input each. The Octopad turns the single-player game experiences into multiplayer experiences. (You may have a look at the following link on people playing single-player games with the Octopad: https://youtu.be/mmYjpyOToOI) I think it is interesting and the idea of splitting the control of an object was included in my multiplayer co-op games.
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Intention
The intention of this project was to "Explore the idea of “one player’s actions affect the others’ decision” in co-op and vs multiplayer games".
In the initial stage, the target platform was mobile devices. Most of the multiplayer mobile games on a single device only entertain two players. However, ‘four’ is like a magic number for multiplayer games. The most successful multiplayer games, for example, the Mario series, Overcooked and PUBG etc, put players into groups of four. Therefore, ideas with a maximum of four players were generated.
Ideation​
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On the other hand, dividing the players view into different parts may not be a good idea for multiplayer mobile games on a single device because the objects may look too tiny in the divided view. By looking into King of Opera, Badland and mini-games from Mario party, I came to a conclusion of making the players operating in the same view would be a good solution to the division of screen problem. Furthermore, one of the elements in the multiplayer games that makes it engaging is the unpredictability of other players’ actions and the interaction between players. All of the above-mentioned constraints were included when I design the game prototypes in this semester.
The last game is a split of the classic ‘Snake’ game into a multiplayer game in which each player controls only one direction of the snake’s movement. The control of direction changes over time to make them get into chaos. They have to catch as much food as they can before they die.
The spaceship maze runner is a game that each player controls the propulsion force in one of the directions only. They should not bump into the walls and there are traps in the maze. It requires the players to communicate and react quickly to control the movement of the spaceship carefully.
In the cat and rat game, every player plays as a cat and they have discovered a rat around their territories. They have to scare the rat away by tapping on it. As the rat get scared, it runs faster. Meanwhile, a cheese will be spawn. The rat accelerates after eating the cheese which enhances the difficulty to be tapped accurately. Players can drag the cheese to the other players’ territory to trick on them.
In this game, each player is responsible for catching the preys on one-fourth of the screen by tapping on the preys. The octopus has a maximum of eight legs and it takes some time for it to catch each prey. If it is about to catch a prey but another player tapped on the screen, the leg will respond to that command and the prey will escape. The players have to co-operate to catch as much prey as they can during the time limit.
Level Design
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Among the four prototypes, the Maze Runner is the only one that needed a map design. A straight path, horizontal curvy path, circular path and vertical curvy path were included in the design of the new map which requires the players to fully utilize the four buttons. There are traps on the straight path to make it not that easy. Then, they have to cooperate to pass through the long curvy path. As many players have lost many of their heart here during the playtests, some extra hearts were put along the path. After the players have learnt how to move in all directions, a real challenge is coming that they have to pass through the rotating bar quick enough. Otherwise, they will be hit by the bar and lose many hearts. Next, a vertical curvy path with some moving obstacles was designed that the players need to stop-and-go at proper timing along the path instead of just keep going. Finally, before reaching the goal, the players have to reach the 'safety chambers', avoid being hit by the big moving block and bypass it.
