RESPONSIBILITIES:
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Designed level concepts that match the pattern of ​a 2 player activity + a cheesy quote or idiom
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Created 2D animated sprites to suit the game's scrapbook aesthetic
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Playtested and reiterated level 2D art elements based on playtest results to better guide players to the goal of the level
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Presented at various showcases including CNE student showcase stage where we garnered attention for our intentions to connect players and short project timeline winning Best Overall Game!!
To Jam Challenge
Create a game over the weekend starting with the prompt: "It's supposed to do that"
Ideating
Our team started by coming up with ways we can interpret the theme "It's supposed to do that" and coming up with concepts that seem expandable but also in scope for a 2-3 day game jam, especially considering one of our members has never worked in Unity before.
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The idea we liked the most ended up being a 2 player co-op game with many stages and a single gimmick for each stage. The players will have one simple control of moving around the screen space and looking for a progress bar to go up the closer they get to the goal. We then elaborated by creating a space for everyone to brainstorm and spitball as many concepts as we can come up with to have a roster to choose levels from.
In our Miro Board, we've been organizing meeting notes since the beginning that documents the thought process of our design.
Check out some other ideas we had!
The name Marco Polo is a double entendre coming from the name of the explorer (we want players to explore each level to find what to do) and the children's game where you call out "Marco" and "Polo" to find each other.
My designs!
We singled out ideas we wanted to do and programmers each chose one to work on
Playtesting
Since this was a 2-3 day game jam, playtesting was a lot less structured and a lot more rushed than we are normally used to. This didn't stop us from gathering as much useful information as we possibly can from simply observing player behaviour though.
Players struggled to understand level where you have to move in the same direction as your partner. There were no signifiers aside from the question mark and the progress bar movement which is confusing if you aren't told to focus on what both you and your partner are doing at the same time.
In the updated version, we added arrows to the players that point in the direction they are moving to signify this level has something to do with the direction you move. When playtesting this version at the CNE, we found players think they have to move in the direction the arrow is pointing because it appears and disappears if you aren't constantly moving. A suggestion we received was to have an image in the background show more context about sameness and direction being the two themes.
Players struggled to understand you have to push the other player through the walls because the players are circular and quite difficult to push without rolling.
A developer strategy we used when we were testing ourselves was to push the other player against the pencil to speed things up. With that in mind, we relaid the level for there to be more pencil surface to push on and pointed them in a more obvious direction.
After those previous changes were made for the CNE, players now struggle the most with this level where both players control one circle except one player has horizontal movement and the other has vertical. The goal is to push the stamp to its designated spot on the postcard. Because there are scattered objects all over the card, its not instantly obvious that the stamp is out of place and is movable. A change we plan on making is to have the empty box glow as feedback for when players are taking a while. Another suggestion we received is to have the stamp hop a bit to draw attention and signify it is a movable object.
2D Assets
Reoccuring level obstacles
— players should be able to intuitively tell these are not movable elements because they are not drawn as a sticker
Interactable objects
— often drawn as stickers or with jitter animation
Other art
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
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No matter how many times we are proven wrong, we will still default to assuming there is adequate information for the player to understand. We thought, for a game with simple themes, simply visuals, simple controls, surely there are corners we can cut on signifiers —we were proven wrong. There is never a way to know what players will be thinking unless you PLAYTEST.
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There is so much polish you can get done if you make sure everyone on the project is on the same page, and enjoying what they are creating. Everyone on our team volunteered to do this game jam the day before it started knowing very little about it (or eachother) but one thing we know about all our personalities is we never turn down an opportunity to create.
