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Game Overview
As your farm crop flourishes, invading ghosts will flock to steal them. The player's goal is to shoot ghost-trapping bubbles and send them into the maw of the baby: Chonkus. The more ghosts captured, the larger the baby becomes.
Design Pillars
Child-Friendly
The foundation of the game, built simple & fun!
Spatialy-Aware
The player is informed of the game state and goal(s) at all times.
Flow
Slow to start, picks up pace naturally and creates a sense of control.
My Contributions
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Structured the chaos of wave progression to create lively situations. Designed enemy types, pathfinding, and a system to govern the objective of the player/ghosts.
As a game designer,
I pitched and created the initial concept. Taking it from ideation, to finished product. Designed all gameplay aspects to create a dynamic experience.
Oversaw the planning, execution, and delivery of the project. I facilitated collaboration and kept the team updated with a constantly developing design document.
System Design
Spawning
As the game kicks off, the ghosts spawn from graves surrounding the outskirt of the player farmland. The starting waves are small, as to not overwhelm the player. As the timer ticks, the pace increases - akin to a typical arcade experience.
When a ghost grabs a crop, they will choose a random grave to move towards. If contact is made, the ghost escapes with the crop. If bubbled by the player, the ghost will drop the carried crop on the spot.
Pathfinding
During initial playtests, the chaos of the ghosts spawning made it impossible for players to protect their crops.
To help, I designed a crop-season-system that designated which crops the ghosts would flock to. Giving the players knowledge of where to intercept the ghosts,
The spawning is controlled by a Unity script with three malleable variables: time, ghost objective, and number of ghosts spawned.
The general intent was to maintain the flow, keeping the players moving from crop to crop - increasing the challenge as the game progressed.
Ghosts
The enemies come in the form of cute ghosts.
Normal
Invisible
The Normal and Invisible variant follow the designation of the crop-season-system. From spawn they'll float to a crop, pick it up, and take it to a random grave. The Invisible ghost is glossily translucent, until it picks up a crop.
Gross
A misdirecting entity. The Gross variant does not conform to the crop-season-system. Instead, it floats aimlessly around the level. Lose points, if fed to the Chonkus. Introduced later to throw off player and diversify gameplay.
Crop Radar
Lastly, when a ghost picks up a crop, arrows point in their direction.
Game Design
(Deep Dive)
Verticallity
Even with the crop-season-system and arrows pointing to thieving ghosts, the player's field of view is limited. The player can bounce off of bushes, trees, bubbled ghosts, and the Chonkus. This'll allow them gather information from the air - plus, it's fun!
Win or lose, and Scoring
As a Base Defense game, the player loses if all crops are stolen, and earns an increasingly prestigious win by safekeeping crops and bubbling ghosts to boost point gain.
200
15
Marcus - 200
Roomate - 170
You - ???
Project Manager
Scrum Methodology
At the start and middle of our day, we'd hold a stand-up meeting. A 2-week project between ten people warranted the extra meeting to keep all informed and raise concerns.
Product Owner
As the product owner, I supported the team primarily by defining user stories, creating the product backlog, and served as the primary point of communication for the project.
Information and backlog on Miro.
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