Project Description

Download (itch.io)

Git Repository

Summary

This was a 3 week University group project with the goal of bringing innovative solutions to the game industry.

Safe Passage is a 2-person mobile device communication game where players must take on the roles of a ship spotter and ship coordinator to lead boats traversing through water to their safe harbor. The two players must speak with each other and use the tools at their disposition to complete the tasks. Both players do not see what the other sees, and will have information or controls which are different from one another.

Player 1 (ship spotter): Player 1 sits atop the lighthouse, from where they can spot traversing ships by moving their phone around like binoculars. Each ship will have its own identity which depends on the ship type, its name, and the colors of its flag. The spotter must communicate the identity of the ship to the ship coordinator and let them know where they are headed, especially when obstacles are in the way.

Player 2 (ship coordinator): Player 2 can see a map of the area, where they will see unidentified ship cons moving through the waters. They will also have a guide available to tell them where identified ships need to go, as there are 3 different harbors. From the information that they obtain from player 1, they may identify the ships through the guide and then lead the ships to their respective harbors.

Innovative Solutions Presented:

• Expending on the mobile co-op game genre

• Bringing immersion to co-op games through mobile phone gyroscope and accelerometer controls.

• Potential for future porting in VR.

Duration

3 weeks

Team Size

6

Game Engine

Unity

Date

March 2024

My Tasks and Contributions

Mechanics and Gameplay Design: While we worked as a team at the start of the project to brainstorm ideas and to come up with the main concept, further design choices were made through collaboration with another designer to create, change, or remove mechanics and systems in the game.

Level Design: Designing of the map, closely tying the game mechanics with the level design to ensure mindful and meaningful setup of the environment. This mostly involved setting up obstacles through the natural environment (rocks, ship wrecks, land), and also setting up dynamic obstacles (small AI boats).

Prototyping and Running Playtest Sessions: In the early stages of the project and during the design phase, I quickly created a split screen Unity prototype to simulate the game with keyboard and mouse controls. This prototype was then tested for fun and intuitiveness with various players. Further playtest sessions were ran as the game evolved to keep an iterative approach to development.

Music Production: I produced the sole track for the game which plays during the menu screen using Bandlab.

Gallery

Documents

Game Design Doc

Playtest Report