Variant: Gamelets

Level Walkthrough:

• Engine: Unity 4

• Development Time: 4 months

• Genre: Isometric Puzzle Platformer

• Platform: PC, Chrome Browser

• Role: Game Designer

• Released: December 18th 2018

Responsibilities:

• Data Entry, Implementation, Difficulty Progression and Testing for both the Graphing and Refining mini-games

• Designing and Implementation of 5+ level for Energy Mini-game focusing on teaching the core ideas of the lesson without relying on timers and other typical

• Insure Difficulty progression through mechanics and material covered

• Build levels that test player’s critical thinking and play with the level’s perspective

Project Overview:

After the successful release of Arte: Hemut and Arte: Lumiere, the Triseum team set to work on our next big project, setting the bones and foundation for the next Variant title. The flagship of Triseum’s educational game model, Variant: Limits focused on teaching players/students the ins and outs of the Calculus concept known as limits. The work done on these mini-games (or gamelets as we called) were designed to show future investors some potential routes for how the next Variant title would cover Calculus material such as Graphing, Refining, Energy, and Related Rates. While I am proud of the work I did for Refining and Graphing gamelets, mostly data entry and testing, the area of the project I feel I had the most impact as a designer was the mini-game focusing on Energy and Related Rates. Using the core of a puzzle platformer, players were challenged to uses graphs, manipulate energy, and critical thinking to slowly work their way through a simple level to the goal square.

Level Development:

As we proceeded with this mini-game, the design and education team collaborated on a list of goals and rules we wanted to follow while developing an designing each level. Some of these rules were as follows:

• Never rely on timers or time-based mechanics - Triseum’s games wisely catered not only to the average student but also to students who might not be gamers and also students with learning and performance disabilities. Forcing those students to do something on a clock would be irresponsible and only lead to frustration but ultimately defeat the purpose of the game to be a learning aid.

• Keep it simple - This is a often overlooked rule in design, but it was hyper important with us. Again, some of our students might have learning disabilities or might not be practiced gamers, throwing too much at a player at one time was a recipe for a nightmare of frustration and annoyance. That said, we worked to keep the early levels short, allowing practiced players to get through the levels quickly, while providing less experienced gamers bite-sized challenges.

• Challenge players, but keep it fun - One of the primary things Triseum wanted to avoid with Variant and any game it made was digging up the specter of the older Edutainment games, those that were essentially just glorified, digital worksheets. And while we knew these were just prototypes that were designed to show what could be done and not as a final product, we still knew we wanted to challenge players while keeping it fun. That is why we added in a difficulty curve that not only slowly introduced mechanics before escalating them, then combining them with previous mechanics. We also worked to make our levels compelling by adding in verticality, hiding small clues and routes until later in the level, and even flipping entire levels to create interesting wow moments.

• No crossing paths - Due to how our collision and navigational systems were set up, we could never have objects, bridges or moving objects, cross each other’s paths. We could have them meet to form “T” intersections or something similar, but they could never cross. It may seem like a small matter, but working within a confined space, every square counted. Even still, we made some very intriguing levels. I am sure if we were to pursue a full project, we would refine these systems and allow for some overlap and collision.

• Limited Free Roaming - Keeping our students in mind, we wanted to insure our players always had a path to follow. We answered this concern by having most levels be relatively linear, with flipping buttons directing players to their next goal until they reached the exit.

With these ideas in mind, we set about creating levels.

1. First we began by taking some of the levels we already had and arranging them in an order the introduced important mechanics, but left room for additional levels and levels to test a player’s aptitude with a mechanic.

2. After that, we split up the levels and diagnosed what each level needed to accomplish. This one needs to introduce negative energy, this one needs to test player’s knowledge of related rates. Doing this gave each level a simple, but direct purpose that helped to firmly direct the level’s design.

3. Third, we made simple sketches using Adobe Photoshop and other tools to concept out levels to see which ideas we liked best and why. We quickly went through a lot of potential ideas using this method, slowly discovering a core group of great levels that accomplished various important tasks or appropriately challenged players. With some levels we needed to actually dive into Unity and whitebox them out before going into proper documentation, but this happened rarely.

4. Next, with the level approved we proceeded with building the various levels, scripting the level’s movement, getting the stopping points correct, adjusting the energy indicators for the various moving objects, and just get the level playable. This would then reveal other concerns that would need to be addressed, sometimes even resulting in the scrapping a level, but most were able to be corrected in some way.

5. Finally, with the level’s finally approval, we shifted to bug fixing and polish. With bugs done, each level was sent for a final shake down before being approved and added to the game for good.

Level Playthroughs:

Conclusion:

Overall, working on Variant: Gamelets was a fun and enjoyable experience that really gave me the opportunity to build interesting puzzle levels. Having never really explored that part of level design, it was a unique change of pace from the usual levels that I develop. The experience taught me a number of different things such as to never be afraid to try out ideas, to build plans, and overall helped me to become a more confident designer. In an effort to make our levels more complex, I explored the idea of adding a bridge to a moving object. At first I was met with some concerns about what it would mean for our levels, but after implementing it in a test level, the other designers agreed it was an exciting twist on an old mechanic. It was small ideas like this, where my idea lead to more interesting and compelling levels, that reinforced my faith in myself as a designer.