Project Fragments

Role: Lead Designer

Team Size: 4

Players: 2

Engine: Unity

Tools

Overview

Project Fragments is a 2D couch cooperative game that was made in a week during a gamejam sponsored by Google Stadia. We took 2nd place in the competition and continued working on it, coverting it into the project Our Passing Thoughts. This page simply looks at the gamejam portion of that lifespan. For the full project details, you can check out that section of the website here.

https://jonathanumarkhitab.wordpress.com/our-passing-thoughts/

My role on this project was as the Lead Game Designer, where I also handled Animation, game direction, and sound design, working closely with our programmer to build tools and features.

Project Design Goals

A couch cooperative game with multiple levels.
Multiple abilities and interactables centered around cooperating with one another.
Ensure that no player felt like they were just “waiting” around.
Design a core mechanic utilizing rechargable resources
Create an environment where players would feel like they were in sync and playing with each other.

Responsibilities

All Design related features including Level, Game, Narrative, UX and more.
All Animation and related features.
Design mechanics and features of the game around cooperative play, focusing on ensuring that both players were communicating with one another and felt like they were making meaningful contributions.
Design systems that allowed core and casual players to play at a similar level, focusing on skills that would still create challenges for both players at a similar level. So one player didn’t feel bored or at ease.
Design simplistic looking challenges that offer a lot of complexity based on how players interact with one another.
Build 3 extensive levels that progressed in difficulty, introducing new mechanics and challenges.
Animate player characters (3 Attack combo, run, death, jump, abilities).
Working with Artists to develop the art style and supporting visual assets such as UI elements, interactable animations, visual effects and more to maintain a cohesively and consistent experience.
Worked with Composer to integrate atmospheric audio tracks and develop sounds for various in game features, interactions and assets.
Coordinate different departments, to ensure development was on track to be completed and everyone was working under a unified direction.
Designed, recorded and edited audio for in game interactions, feedback and assets for features such as jumping, doors, attacks, and more.
User Experience, working with programmer to implement various forms of feedback, testing levels, and more to ensure a smooth and enticing experience.

Additional Information

Genre: Cooperative Adventure
Language: C#
Duration: May 2020 (1 Week)
Platform: PC
Controls: Gamepad

Additional Information

Our passing thoughts began as an idea during an online gamejam hosted by Google to build a cooperative game for their Goodle Stadia platform. During the gamejam I acted as the game director, where our team took 2nd place in the compeititon. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive with particular points made towards the mechanics and gamefeel.

The entire project started with a game that was pitched as; players collect points as they move around the map and then spend those points to do things like jump and attack. You can share your points with your partner to ensure they have enough points to perform an action. It was a resource collection idea that had finite resources and the challenge was spending your resources efficently.

It was an interesting concept but very quickly became apparent the coop portion felt like an add-on then the core idea. It felt like a tedious micromanaging simulator that would be a nightmare to for both devs and players alike. It creates very narrow experience, and could easily scare off players with how much the game would get in its own way.

And so I dissected what was the thing that made the concept exciting, and to me it was the concept of sharing resources to do things. There was a lot of interesting spaces to explore as I asked and answered the many questions that came up. What does mastery look like? What is the feeling we are looking for? How is the dynamic between players? What makes this require cooperation? What IS cooperation?

I wanted to capture that feeling, almost akin to a rollarcoster split between harmony and chaos which support one another. And so I came up with this sharing mechanic which utilizes permanent resources that you transfer between one another to interact with the world.

Detailed Responsibilties

Design

Design and Build 3 levels each featuring an hour of gameplay each.
Interactable objects
Core Mechanics
Player abilities
Progression
Controls
User Experience (Gamefeel, balancing, Feedback, Rewards, Sound Design)
Systems (Traversal, Combat)
Cameras (Setup, Framing, and Movement)
Enemy Behaviours

Animation

Hand Animate 2 Characters at 30fps.
- Run
- Jump
- Fall
- One attack combo consisting of three unique attacks for each character.
- VFX for characters.
Misc Animations (Doors, debris, crumbling, etc….)

Art

Art direction for Characters
Art Direction for World building.
Supporting Set Dressing for Gameplay

Audio

Sound design for various ingame interactions, foley and feedback.

Project Management

Coordinate between programmers, artists and composer.