Project Type
Full Game
Skills/Tools
- Game System Design
- Playtesting / Iteration
- Visual Scripting
- Unity
- C# (Visual Studio)
Duration
January 2023 - August 2023
Project Overview
English_Is_Hard_ is a team project that I made at DigiPen with two other designers. The game was made entirely in Unity, implemented through a combination of Unity's Visual Scripting and C# code. I was the Design Lead for this project, so it was my responsibility to keep the design of the game consistent with the design pillars we initially set out for.
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EIH is a ground-up Missile Command-style shooter, in which the player controls a cannon to fend off aliens from kidnapping cows, while typing words to increase the power of the cannon. In addition to managing the design vision and documentation, I also did a large part of the Unity implementation for this project, most notably the Typing Manager and the Wave Manager.
Project Details
Constraints
EIH was a made by a team of three freshman game design students, myself and 2 others. It was made for a college course, and therefore we had only about 13 weeks to develop to game from concept to Gold. EIH was built with the Unity game engine.
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These constraints influenced much of our early design, starting with the concept. We settled on this concept from the 9 that we prepared because we believed it would be straightforward enough to implement, and that it would require little to be a full gameplay experience; all we needed to ship was waves of enemies and ammo that replenished when the player typed words.
This allowed us to spend time implementing varying enemy types, dynamic wave creation, and a boss wave, despite having such a short development cycle. It also allowed us plenty of time to polish off our gameplay experience before our Gold deadline.
Design Pillars
As a team, we set a small handful of design pillars at the start of the project to guide us. As the Design Lead, it was also my job to keep track of design documentation and to ensure that all design decisions being made over the course of the project fit into our design pillars.
Pillar 1: Time/Attention Management
The core of EIH’s design is the inherent split of attention between the two core systems: typing and shooting. Our intended player experience included having the player deliberately swap between the two actions, and for the timing of that swap to be an informed tactical decision.
Pillar 2: Arcade-Style Gameplay
EIH was designed to play like a classic arcade game. This informed EIH’s endless waves, score system, and power-ups.
Pillar 3: Arcade-Style Aesthetic
It was important to our vision that EIH not only play like an arcade game, but FEEL like one. This meant emulating the 8-bit audio of classic arcade games, but also using pixel-art for the entire game.
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Problems and Solutions
Typing/Shooting System Synergy
The biggest design hurdle we faced when developing EIH was nailing the cohesion between the typing system and the shooting system. We wanted them to feel connected in such a way that the player would be required to swap back and forth between typing and shooting frequently. We also wanted this swapping to be a short-term tactical decision that would be influenced by variables in the game state (current enemies on screen, time left in the wave, etc.).
We started with an ammo system, in which the player needed ammo in order to shoot, and gained ammo by typing the prompted words. However, this system failed to create the desired player experience. It created a binary: either the player was able to shoot, or they were not. It also incentivized ammo stockpiling. Playtesters would type several words at once, and then not type at all for long periods of time.
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With the help of our instructor, we came up with a new system. With the new system, the player had a fillable bar with certain thresholds. The player could fill the bar by typing words, but the bard would constantly deplete if not being actively filled. Depending on the fill level of the bar, the bullets that the player could shoot would be more or less powerful.
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This system was successful at creating the desired player experience. It eliminated the binary of the player’s cannon-power, replacing it with a variable cannon that was still determined by the typing system. It also resulted in more regular swapping between typing and shooting in playtesters, as well as split-second decision making on when to type and when to shoot.
Bar-Sapping Enemy
Once we got the back-and forth between shooting and typing working well, we decided to add an enemy that engages more directly with the typing mechanic. The intent was to add enemy variety, while increasing the cohesion between the two systems. We settled on the Sapping Enemy. This enemy does not seek to take cows (game ends when all cows are taken), but rather saps the bar energy away while it lives, thus reducing the player’s cannon power.
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Unfortunately, this created a death-spiral. The Sapping Enemy reduced the cannon power of the player, thus reducing the player’s ability to deal with the sapping enemy. We found that if this enemy was not killed immediately, it almost always resulted in a game over, even from players that had been excelling up until that point. No amount of number-tweaking would fix it. If I were to go back to EIH, I would overhaul this enemy, and replace it with something that better fits within the game’s systems.
Conclusion
English_I_ Hard_ was a wonderful project to work on. I got experience working on a team, tracking design pillars, and writing design documentation. I also got more familiar with C# Unity implementation. EIH was definitely a system-intensive piece; much of the player enjoyment was found in simply engaging with the typing and shooting systems. I learned a lot about systems design (including certain mistakes that I will know not to make in the future), and successfully worked with others to develop gameplay systems that provided a consistently enjoyable player experience.