CONTENT
CONCEPT
Help another version of you to overcome your inner demon in a strange physical manifestation of your mind.
Help me help Me is a first-person LAN co-op game where we utilize unconventional communication to put a spin on how you play co-op games.
The players exist in the same space but cannot see each other, though they can communicate through the environment.
PRODUCT OWNER
This project was the second time I acted as a Product Owner, which gave me the chance to learn from my earlier experience.
This time, I began by defining the role for myself.
I, as a product owner, shall:
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Maintain a clear and updated vision of the game
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Provide teammates with direction rather than a step-by-step guide
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Not be afraid to make tough decisions that will positively impact the project as a whole
As a whole, I do think this approach was a success, and what I do know is that it allowed both me and my teammates to be creative.
The first time adapting the role, I took on a much more hands-on approach, which limited what I could do in the project as well as my teammates' room for creativity.
The reason for that was mostly confusion over the expectations of 'Product Owning.' But I learned something valuable, and it gave me a good platform to stand on for the second time around, so I see the experience as a success.
Together with the SCRUM master Anton Hedlund, we upheld a Jira board which helped us plan and execute all tasks within our scope on time!
To achieve this, we had to make some hard decisions, such as cutting the audio plugin Wwise from the project completely due to fatal bugs in the last week of development. This meant that our sound designer lost about a week of progress, but we ensured that we had a playable build and could take time to focus on other critical aspects. We also made sure to build a sound system to use in place of Wwise so that the vital aspects of the audio could still be included in the final build.
Team Contract
Pitch Presentation
SYSTEM DESIGN
My design goals were:
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Make sure each player feels Important
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Establish a strong connection between players
As the players cannot see each other, I wanted to ensure they could 'feel' each other's presence.
We tried to achieve importance by creating mostly asymmetrical puzzles, where each player had to do a different but equally important action to complete any puzzle.
To make sure the players felt a strong connection between them, we focused on creating as many ways to communicate as possible. Some examples were movable items and a blackboard where they could write messages.
Another important aspect was sound. We ensured that each specific item and action had a recognizable sound cue so that players could easily associate that sound with a location or something that needed to be done.
TECH DESIGN
During this project, I served as a connection between programmers and the level designers, implementing many of the different aspects as well as scripting features requested by level design and programming.
The Blackboard: A way for players to communicate through dimensions. The idea behind the blackboard was to provide players with a limited but clear means of communication. We felt that it was needed to reduce players feeling annoyed by the lack of communicatin they could provide. This was achieved through the use of Linetracing and Render targets.
Bodypart Spawner: An important part of puzzle no.1. The spawner checks once per second to see if there are any actors overlapping it. If the number of overlapping actors is less than the allowed maximum number, it will spawn more; otherwise, it will stop.
UI & UX
The single most challenging aspect of the game's design was User Experience.
How do we ensure that players know what to do in an asymmetrical puzzle when communication is limited to the environment?
To try to tackle this huge challenge, I decided on a few things we needed:
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A clear visual language
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Environmental hints
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Clear sound ques
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UI journal.
All this helped significantly, though if more time was available, we would want to establish the visual language through a tutorial to help players connect the dots.
We would also want to implement more ways for player to communicate.
I handled all UI scripting and creation of VFX. UI imagery by Fredrik Askebris.