Wards!
Game Designer, Level Designer, Programmer
Project type: University Final Project
Team size: 3
Development: March/2020 – November/2020
Engine: Unity
Wards! is a couch multiplayer party game, where up to 4 players face each other in short minigames to define the biggest winner. All of the minigames are based on platformer mechanics and were designed to allow moments where winners become losers and the whole dynamic of the game changes.
This game was the result of my Game Design Bachelor’s degree final project, which I discussed in more details in this post.​
Gameplay Design
To start off, this game had to answer a question, which was the basis of the theoretical part of this project.
That being said, gameplay design and prototype was my main responsibility, and it should reflect all of the findings the team made while researching and writing about the Self-Determination Theory (SDT).
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In total, we designed 7 different minigames all taking in consideration the SDT fundamentals as a guide for defining objectives and player actions. These minigames were largely inspired by games as Wario Ware, Dumb Ways to Die and Mario Party, which are all focused on short levels, simple controls and objectives. The minigames were divided into player vs player and player vs level, which allowed us to create different types of tension between levels.
All 7 minigames use a similar level structure so that, due to unity between them, we created a pattern easy to be understood at a glance.
Alongside with the 7 minigames, we designed 5 different random events that can occur during a level. Due to the procedural essence of this feature, it allowed us to create a wider range of variance between each gameplay session, always triggering events in different moments and forcing the players to adjust their strategies to adapt to the events effects.
User Experience
As this is a party game, one of our objectives was for the UX to be the simplest possible, from the player interactions to the menu navigation.
