Bubblescape

The theme for the game jam was; 'bubbles'. The game is a first-person casual platformer with puzzle elements. The player is in a dream where they have a magic wand that can shoot bubbles, these bubbles are used to help the player progress through the game allowing them to create bubble platforms.

My Role

The project was created with a team of 5. I was responsible for coming up with a design that followed the art vision and supported the mechanics whilst maintaining the casual themed pacing of the game. This meant understanding the art leads decisions and concepts, communicating with the art team to get a better understanding of available assets and understanding the mechanics provided by the programmer.

The Team

Gameplay Beats / Pacing

I started by communicating with the programmer in order to understand what mechanics would be in the game. I did this in order to understand how different aspects of the game interacted with each other and in which order we needed to introduce mechanics to the player.

I then created this Miro chart to organise my ideas and communicate it with the rest of the team. I decided to introduce the players to a mechanic, give them time to understand the mechanic through a problem that requires them to apply their knowledge, straight after the mechanic is explained to them. An example of this is at the start of the game I introduce the player to the controls for walking around and jumping, I then gave them an obstacle course for them to apply these newly learnt mechanics. This method allows the player to understand mechanics at a slow pace rather than having too much information at one time. The game is quite casual and slow paced which is why I used this method.

Another main point I had to account for was a scenic vista. The art lead wanted the level to look like the inside of a kids bedroom that had been separated due to the dream like environment. I chose to deliver this to the player as a scenic vista in order for them to understand their environment whilst also seeing a clear goal ahead. This worked as a way to set a destination for the player and would be used to show landmarks. I decided to have a tight spaced corridor immediately before the vista to create a build-up and deliver the vista as a climax in order to hold the player's attention.

Scenic Vista

Paper Design

I then created a map of the level according to the previous chart and concepts given to me by the art lead.

I made sure to communicate my ideas with the chart to the art lead and then was given concepts relating to how areas would look at different points of the game. Using these concepts of particular areas I created the paper design/layout of the level.

Due to the tight schedule of the game jam I wasn't able to iterate upon the paper design but instead started blocking areas out in order to test things in engine and make changes through feedback.

Greybox / Blockout

The blockout was used to test the mechanics, get a good understanding for the scale of areas and to test my paper design to check if it was achieving the desired pacing.

The blockout was a good way to test, iterate and even find problems that the team hadn't considered.

When I started blocking out my design I noticed that the team had not thought about how we would inform the players of controls. I brought up this problem with the artists and proposed an asset that would consistently be the same whenever a player is introduced to something new. The artist came back with this floating book asset. Then I used the block out to show the concept artist where we required these books and what needed to be written on them. They came back with a few drawings that I turned into decals and the problem was solved through communication and having a blockout to find the issue.

Iteration

Most of my iteration was done in the blockout stage, this makes it easier to adjust before things are cluttered with assets. The main problem that was evident during testing was that the game was too hard. Players weren't timing their jumps correct and kept falling in between objects. I reduced the difficulty through my design making the distance between jumps shorter.

The players then found the bubble platforms too hard, (after a certain amount of time the bubble would pop, and the player would fall). The player's got frustrated as they didn't have time to plan their next jump and execute it, they would either fall before jumping or jump too early. I communicated this with the programmer and asked them to add a time variable that I could adjust. This allowed me to control the difficulty throughout the game. Giving players more time to think when platforming whilst maintaining a slight difficulty.

Another issue on difficulty emerged, this time it was an issue with player psychology. Some areas had quite basic jumps but the areas composition that was presented to the player looked overwhelming, players started to stress out and panic causing the area to become difficult. When players were stressed, they started pressing the wrong buttons or misjudging jumps because they were too focused on something else. To solve the problem, I made sure to open these areas to give players more space so that they didn't feel confined. I also removed red nightmare clusters from areas that involve jumping (red nightmare clusters kill the player when touched). This way the player is not concerned or stressed when approaching problems, there is a reduction in complexity whilst retaining the difficulty.