NATURAL DISASTER
Natural Disaster is a point-and-click inspired puzzle game played inside a View Master in which the player explores a world in scenes and plants seeds of disaster using the butterfly effect!
Planned Release: April 26, 2023
Planned Release: April 26, 2023
SUMMARY
DETAILS
Platform: PC with controller support
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Team Size: 29
Development Time: 8 months
Purpose: To create a fun sandbox experience working with minimal mechanics and breadth of content, creating a space for the player to be creative with the foundation of simple mechanics rather than directing them through an excess of features and systems.
Out of over 200 pitches, this game was voted through three rounds of elimination by students and industry professionals to become one of the 8 final games our graduating senior class would develop for Capstone. I was the vision holder for this game, pitching it by myself for the first two rounds and along with two of my prototype teammates in the third round.
Platform: PC with controller support
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Team Size: 29
Development Time: 8 months
Purpose: To create a fun sandbox experience working with minimal mechanics and breadth of content, creating a space for the player to be creative with the foundation of simple mechanics rather than directing them through an excess of features and systems.
Out of over 200 pitches, this game was voted through three rounds of elimination by students and industry professionals to become one of the 8 final games our graduating senior class would develop for Capstone. I was the vision holder for this game, pitching it by myself for the first two rounds and along with two of my prototype teammates in the third round.
Pictured: One-page document I made for round one of pitches, my presentation for round two of pitches, one-page document I made for round three of pitches, slide I made for round three of pitches, my presentation with my teammates to the class at the end of the Alpha phase, our presentation during EAE Play.
GAMEPLAY DESIGNER
- Collaborate with artists, engineers, and designers to ensure all aspects of the game support the intended player experience
- Create internal and external design documents in Miro
- Create levels in Unreal Engine 5 using composition to provide breadth within a fixed camera
- Use Unreal's Sequencer and in-engine proprietary tools to implement content
- Use minimal mechanics in a variety of unique ways for a sandbox gameplay experience
- Drive creative vision, lead design meetings, and coordinates across departments to stay on track with goals and adjust implementation of designs when needed
- Pitched the game using a one-page document and slide deck to over 200 students and industry professionals
DEVELOPMENT LOG
FINAL RELEASE
The planned release date for this game is April 26, 2023, publishing on Steam with our live presentation at EAE Launch.
CONTENT PHASE
Content phase begins January 9, 2023.
PREPARING FOR RELEASE
Final production phase begins in March 2023.
BETA
November 8 - December 2, 2022
The trailer shown at EAE Play to introduce our game.
Road to EAE Play
EAE Play is the Entertainment Arts & Engineering program's Winter event to showcase the midpoint progress and receive feedback from industry professionals on year-long projects.
At the start of this sprint, we had a little less than a month to prepare. Out of necessity, we halted the development of new content and focused our efforts on refining the aspects of the game that would be shown during the livestream.
Our presentation at EAE Play!
Our producers Easton Madsen and Ryan Abney answer questions from John O'Neill, a Senior Software Engineer at Unity.
Time Stamp: 25:25 - 39:41
Our producers Easton Madsen and Ryan Abney answer questions from John O'Neill, a Senior Software Engineer at Unity.
Time Stamp: 25:25 - 39:41
The final reel with all seven scenes for EAE Play.
"Final" Location List
We started the phase by narrowing down our final location ideas to choose the last two we needed to create.
Instead of having another brainstorming session, each designer prepared a pitch for a location and we voted on our favorites from those options.
During this phase, it was also decided to overrule the decision in the Alpha phase to have events switch out in the Fairgrounds scene, and it would instead be one static Theme Park.
We started the phase by narrowing down our final location ideas to choose the last two we needed to create.
Instead of having another brainstorming session, each designer prepared a pitch for a location and we voted on our favorites from those options.
During this phase, it was also decided to overrule the decision in the Alpha phase to have events switch out in the Fairgrounds scene, and it would instead be one static Theme Park.
My pitch when deciding our last two locations. The team decided against choosing this as a location for fear of it being too specific.
This branch from the prototype was the sequence we chose to showcase during Play. I worked closely with the engineers to implement this sequence in engine and refine the details.
Whitebox of the Train Station scene I made in Unreal.
ALPHA
October 18 - November 3, 2022
Narrowing the Locations
We had to set a few of our locations before moving forward. The design team met and came to the following conclusions.
Park and Hospital = Neither
These two were the example scenes in the prototype branch. We decided not to move forward with either of them. The park felt too generic, and the hospital had the danger of becoming a "catch-all" location for our branches. We also did not want to imply that evil actions are only through physical harm.
Courtroom vs Prison = Prison Yard
A top branch from the prototype ideation was freeing a thief on trial in a courtroom. I asked the team if we could take that section to a new location, worried that a courtroom scene did not offer enough variety to be one of our seven. We decided instead to use a more interesting prison location--a prison yard. Now it was a world of opportunities with more objects and more NPCs present.
Fairgrounds vs Farmer's Market = Fairgrounds
The player can carry a "Free Sample" sign around a Farmer's Market to direct the NPCs to pick up objects. That locked in the Farmer's Market as a scene, there were game-breaking risks with so many objects, and that this interaction may get stale with multiple uses. Instead, we decided that the Farmer's Market would be a special event inside the actual location, the Fairgrounds. Now we could switch out community events that would take place there, adding more opportunities in a game limited to seven scenes.
We had to set a few of our locations before moving forward. The design team met and came to the following conclusions.
Park and Hospital = Neither
These two were the example scenes in the prototype branch. We decided not to move forward with either of them. The park felt too generic, and the hospital had the danger of becoming a "catch-all" location for our branches. We also did not want to imply that evil actions are only through physical harm.
Courtroom vs Prison = Prison Yard
A top branch from the prototype ideation was freeing a thief on trial in a courtroom. I asked the team if we could take that section to a new location, worried that a courtroom scene did not offer enough variety to be one of our seven. We decided instead to use a more interesting prison location--a prison yard. Now it was a world of opportunities with more objects and more NPCs present.
Fairgrounds vs Farmer's Market = Fairgrounds
The player can carry a "Free Sample" sign around a Farmer's Market to direct the NPCs to pick up objects. That locked in the Farmer's Market as a scene, there were game-breaking risks with so many objects, and that this interaction may get stale with multiple uses. Instead, we decided that the Farmer's Market would be a special event inside the actual location, the Fairgrounds. Now we could switch out community events that would take place there, adding more opportunities in a game limited to seven scenes.
Whitebox of the Graveyard scene I made in Unreal.
Designers continued with our highly collaborative process of using sticky notes of comment and reply chains on the Miro board to give and address feedback on our ideation of branches. The original branch ideas were added by another designer, and the purple sticky notes are my comments.
Storyboard I made of the path that was implemented for the Alpha phase to test our pathway sequencer functionality, using a screenshot of the level's whitebox to organize the scene.
The locations staged for the Alpha build. We started players in the Pier to provide them with the necessary context to guess how to begin the pathway once switching to the Farmer's Market.
Alpha Playtest
In this session, five members of our "sister studio" played our alpha build once each. This was the first time we had players following a specific branch with the interactables. These were our observations from the playtest concerning design.
Goals:
In this session, five members of our "sister studio" played our alpha build once each. This was the first time we had players following a specific branch with the interactables. These were our observations from the playtest concerning design.
Goals:
- Are the interactable objects easy to find?
- Is the next step in the pathway intuitive?
- Starting in the Pier, players would struggle for a few minutes looking for an interactable in the Pier.
- They started exploring right away rather than switching to see all the scenes first.
- Once players switched to the Farmer's Market after failing to find anything in the Pier, they would instantly realize they should bring the "Free Sample" sign to the peanuts.
- After completing that first step of the path, there was no confusion in what to do next to progress.
- Players appeared not to take in the scene as a whole, observing only the area surrounding the butterfly pawn.
- There had been concern that players would not be able to find interactable objects in the scene without a special indicator, like a highlighted outline. Designers' goal was to avoid that, and instead lead players towards interactables in ways that were diegetic. More data was needed, but this playtest proved it was possible to draw players towards the right objects through composition, contrast, and the proper set dressing.
- This pathway had intuitive steps through completion given the over-the-top direction with the signage. We needed to continue to provide that level of context with all our future paths to make them all flow that easily.
- Players were drawn to the objects in the scene with stand-out colors, showing that our use of contrasting colors to show their importance was successful.
PROTOTYPE
September 13 - September 27, 2022
The "First Look" video we shared to the public, reaching 800 views.
Gameplay video provided to the review panel.
One-page pitch document I made for the review panel.
DESIGN PROCESS
How the game mechanics relate to the intended experience
I started with a mind map of ways the player could interact with its surroundings. We valued an effortless control scheme with minimal different buttons, so from here I narrowed down the mechanics the player would control and decided that variations of pressing the same button would warrant different actions.
The result is the controller diagram below I made for the engineers.
"Idling" results in the butterfly landing, a type of interaction. This contributes to the intended experience of trial and error, since the player can essentially stumble upon a new branch just by pausing to think. Pressing or pressing and holding the main button is a different way to interact with an object.
This resulted in three categories of interactions: a zone interaction where an object is affected when the butterfly moves into its space (a la "the flapping of a butterfly's wings" in the original Butterfly Effect saying), a land interaction, and a select interaction with a button press.
We wanted to demonstrate a branch for each of these three types in the prototype. Another designer and I worked together to come up with these paths and storyboarded them to convey the sequence to the rest of the team.
We wanted to demonstrate a branch for each of these three types in the prototype. Another designer and I worked together to come up with these paths and storyboarded them to convey the sequence to the rest of the team.
Designers continued to ideate on possible interaction chains and NPC characters profiles. Our goal was to throw as many ideas on the board as possible to have the best selection to narrow down and find our favorites. Miro's collaboration system allowed us to jump on the board at any time, read anothers' ideas, and leave comments as sticky notes. We had sticky note reply chains that led to a few great breakthroughs on the game as a whole.
Brainstorming diagrams collaborated by multiple designers of interaction pathways stemming from some of our location ideas.
Example character profiles one of the designers made, which I then organized into a diagram to display and connect which locations those characters would be related to.
I took our two favorite branch ideas and storyboarded them to convey the path to the team.
Our last task as designers was to whitebox the two locations that would appear in the prototype. Our collage of images as they appear in a View Master was a vital resource for our camera perspective options and how to utilize composition for maximum detail in such a limited space. I blocked out the Park scene of the prototype with primitive assets provided by the artists.\
Collection of images on existing View Master reels organized by camera angle.
We used these as reference when designing levels and deciding the composition of perspective.
Whitebox of the park scene I built in Unreal.