Valerie Chen
Game Designer | Developer | Artist
Not Your Average Firefighter
Not Your Average Fighter is a 2 player coop micro game made for an arcade machine. Both players have a joystick, representing one of two hands, and the pair work together to move the hose to extinguish the rooms on fire.
Made for Sheridan College
4 days in February 2024
Team of 5
Tools and Software
Unity
Maya, Procreate, Photoshop
Miro
Responsibilities
As the Game Designer....
- Pitched initial idea and iterated over the days
- Programmed the initial prototype
- Tuned game difficulty
Additionally ...
- Sourced, created, and implemented 3D assets
- Performed QA on assets and completed compliance testing
- Animated scene flourish for polish
- Helped create sound list and requirements, then debug issues with implementation
Process
Monday
On the first day, we were introduced to the jam's theme: micro games. Since the groups were randomly selected, we kicked it off with introducing ourselves to the other team members by discussing what we each bring to the table. We also established team norms and rules in a premortem.
We then moved onto initial concepts, both as a team and individually. I wanted a 2-player game of cooperation, so I designed and programmed an initial proof of concept prototype where both joysticks control the movement of one ball.
Tuesday
The next day, we gathered as a team to go through everyone's prototypes and decide on a direction, which happened to be the prototype above.
The next issue was theming.
One of the ideas that I pitched were a series of planes moving upwards, and a penguin on its belly slipping and sliding into the plane's holes to drop downwards before it was crushed into the ceiling.
The problem was that it was difficult to convey within the constraint of 30 seconds since this isn't typical penguin behaviour. We were worried that player's wouldn't be able to grasp their object right away, and that was crucial for a micro game. The idea we landed on was extinguishing fires- intuitive, achievable, and challenging.
Wednesday
On Wednesday, many basic systems were implemented including the water physics, fire mechanic, and base environment. I jumped around from place to place, but my main job was sourcing, creating, and implementing 3D assets. I modelled the hose and posed two hands around it. I implemented the fire truck rolling in. I also helped debug the fire mechanic, sourced sound effects, taught basic animation to the other teammates and did general QA.
Thursday
By the final day, we had a playable product but was missing polish and crucial components. An example are signifiers. Although the goal was for both players to communicate constantly, they couldn't see their own input. We decided to add arrows, one blue and one red, and when combined, it would fuse into a larger purple arrow. The burst of purple helped communicate the goal of working together using the same directional input.
We also needed to do fine-tuning on the strength of the fire and acceleration of the water. Similar to yesterday, I did QA on the final assets and implemented it into engine. I also helped animate polish like when the cat is being sprayed, it'll jump up. If you spray the tree, leaves will blossom. Lastly there was all the sound implementation, which I helped debug.
To wrap it up, we did compliance testing to ensure the game will run properly on the arcade machine. And to this day, Not Your Average Firefighter exists on the arcade machines in Sheridan College.
Key Takeaway
Being comfortable with other disciplines
For this game jam, I was working with a randomized group and my main skillset (2D art and programming) happened to overlap with the others. As a result, I took this opportunity to push myself to do things I'm less comfortable with, one of them being 3D art. I also made myself available for other tasks, like sitting down with the underclassmen to teach them basic animation in Unity, debugging when there's a problem with the code, and organizing the goals and deliverables. Not only did this fill the gaps within our team, but it gave me the confidence and experience to bring forth into other projects.