Bright Void
A competitive-cooperative mobile multiplayer game where players race to be the first to refuel their ship! Initially a serious games university project over two trimesters, we continued development over summer and released on the Google Play Store for Android devices.
2017
Unity
Mobile
Team Project
Task
Across two university trimesters and a summer, we undertook the ambitious task of producing a serious game in collaboration with clients from Radboud University's Games for Emotional and Mental Health (GEMH) lab. The game was intended to tackle social rejection in adolescents through the use of a multiplayer game; exposing players to rejection whilst providing them a with a means to become resilient and overcome it through exposure. Through feedback provided by the clients and academic staff, we went through an intense iterative design and development cycle as we tried to nail the intended design experience. Despite our best efforts, although we weren't able to fully achieve the aims of the game in terms of the serious aspect, we did create a cool, albeit strange and difficult to describe competitive-cooperative 5 player multiplayer game for Android!
In its final version, 5 players compete and race to be the first to refuel their space ship. To refuel their space ship, players collect fuel from fuel crates that are scattered around the level and only open when players are nearby. However, each fuel crate has a number; the number of players required to open it. As such, the more amount of players required nearby to open, the more fuel that is given to nearby players. Players therefore have to decide whether to risk working together to get larger amounts of fuel or to go it alone. If the required player count for a crate is exceeded, players must anonymous vote out one player so that they do not receive fuel for that particular crate. Overall, players compete in short timed rounds to either be the first to refuel their ship or to have the most fuel at the end of the round. After 5 rounds, the player with the most rounds won wins the game and each player is awarded a unique accolade based on their performance.
We eventually released the game on the Google Play Store where it was available for a few years.
My Roles
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Managed a small team of designers, programmers and artists through preproduction and development to meet milestones
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Collaborated on and produced iterative designs with regards to client brief and intended game experience
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Organised and distributed game builds and information to clients for feedback
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Designed, produced and implemented UI and functionality across multiple game versions
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Created a range of different tweakable game object prefabs for the team to use
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Contributed towards main level design layout and balancing
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Implemented art and audio assets provided by team members
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Assisted artists with how to use Unity
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Worked with artists to design and implement a basic character customisation system
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Implemented additional networking functionality using C# and Photon for Unity
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Produced a lot of presentations for both client and academic presentation
Screenshots
Project History & Iteration
To meet the client's brief and expectation, we had to go through many revisions of the game to refine the intended game experience. As such, this resulted in a lot of documentation and presentations that changed throughout the course of development.
Whilst it is difficult to summarise the entire development process and changes, our presentations may be useful for capturing the various stages of development. If you are interested in the project development from conceptualisation to just before release, many of the presentation slides can be accessed in .pdf format below:
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Internal Pitch - initial internal pitch and ideas based on the client brief
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Initial Pitch - initial pitch presented to clients at the start of preproduction
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Client Redesign Meeting - overview of game redesign following client pitch feedback
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End of Preproduction - presentation of our preproduction work over the trimester
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Phase 2 Plan - initial plan and overview for second trimester
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End of Trimester 2 - presentation of our work over second trimester
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End of Phase 2 - presentation of post-trimester 2 work and next steps
Insomnia X Resonate 2017
In 2017, we had the opportunity to exhibit the game (and my other game!) at the Insomnia X Resonate event in Glasgow! This provided us with the opportunity to see how players interacted with the game and if they enjoyed it - especially given that it was originally a serious game. Despite being in an early state and with the controls being somewhat confusing, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that people enjoyed the game when it worked. (running a multiplayer game on free public event WiFi is baaaad!)
