Synergy is a VR single-player game where the player solves puzzle to unlock their memory of past events.
The project was awarded Best Artistic Direction, in the ArtCenter game jam.
Team Members:
Simon Smith : Franklin Wu : Beatriz Abreu : Flora Xia : Mandel Canter
Role: Narrative Design / Level Layout Coordinator / Tester / Debugger
Duration: 48 Hours
Tools Used: Unity
Genre: Adventure
The project had some ambitious goals for us as a team to finish within 48 hours. We knew we wanted to do something different so we tried to shoot for a VR experience. Our technical designer Simon had worked in VR only a handful of times but our team felt we had nothing to lose necessarily. The theme announced was “1+1=3”. And so how were we to abstract this statement into a game? We took this idea and integrated game mechanics into our narrative, building bridges by shooting projectiles, to unlock memories through narrative beats. The maps developed resembled floating islands that looked like neurons in a brain so we followed that idea.
Firstly, the team was a bit of a dream team situation. Roles were easily identified and members were flexible. This made ideas agreeable and was the magic sauce for coordination. Simon and I had worked on 2 other game jams together so we knew each other’s strengths and signs of shortcomings, specifically after hours of continued work. There was so much synergy amongst everyone. This proved beneficial right at the start and deep into the 48 hours.
I remember the initial conception of the game involved a basic sandbox where Simon had programmed a couple of different game mechanics such as flying propulsion, a swinging mechanic, a climbing mechanic. We spent at least 3-4 hours testing the mechanics in this sandbox. As the level design coordinator, I was responsible for crafting a user experience and accessibility in relation to the pacing of our game. This was our roadmap for what mechanics and story beats would be unlocked. We were working around the clock to get 5 levels completed, all with art, testing, sound, NO BUGS. We managed to bring in one of our trusted professors to playtest our game 4 hours before the deadline and through his playtest we identified he had some confusion with the climbing in VR. This was a huge breakthrough because we needed to make climbing accessible so players could get past the first level. The solution was to make the grabbable objects bigger and easier to recognize as intentional.
The main learnings from the project for the role I fell into as the level layout coordinator was
Creating consistency in scale and making sure the level was properly tight with its collisions. - (This prevented players from falling through the level and making the level traversable).
Creating trigger points and moments for the pacing.
What happens to my creativity and workflow when I’m sleep-deprived - (not good).
That it was so important to bring outside playtesters as soon as something is playable - (this helped bring an outside perspective that was absolutely needed for our success).
What building a dev-log recap happened to do for the success of our presentation for our project - (we set aside 3 hours at the end to record and arrange).
The challenges presented for this game jam were the following.
1. Technical designs/constraints for VR.
2. Pushing through the sleep deprivation.
3. The learning curve of working with new people that I’ve never worked with.