Welcome to Crash Course, this project was part of a university project known as Beta Arcade where I personally took on the role of lead within the team and designed and created the games level while managing a 7 person team.
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During this project we where given 12 weeks in total to work together to design our own game, with our team being a healthy balance of skills from design to art and programming we each discussed what kind of game we wished to create.
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The game that the team had settled on was a party style game where the player would take on the role of a steam punk contestant within a steam punk setting where players will race across an air ship to check points to earn a score based on how fast the players completed each section.
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This game takes heavily inspiration from games such as Fall Guys with gameplay focusing on competing against friends using power ups and pushing to gain the advantage within the race, while making their way along the air ship players will face a variety of sections that aim to test the players and help keep the race balanced for all players to have fun.
Level Design Beauty Shots
Start Line
The level starts with each of the 4 players competing along the Crash Course start line where a count down will begin once this count down finishes a siren will sound allowing the players to race off into the first section of the level.
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The first section of the race contains rotating pipes that if players aint careful in crossing will fall down into an oil pit forcing them into a slow climb out the pit while players who manage to keep their balance will find themselves in the breeze of a high powered fan pushing them to a higher point amongst the race showing a reward to the players early on by rewarding skilled players with faster paths and power ups.
This section continues on to an area of the air ship that is made of turning cogs and thick smog below produced from the ship, this section will have the players race across the turning cogs timing their jumps from each cog spinning all the while watching out for other players looking to push them into the smog and steam below.
Check Points
While planning out our games level it was important to not let players who struggle fall behind and feel left out of the experience while also keeping the game balanced for skilled players who manage to complete each section within the given time.
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While designing the level each section of the air ship was broken up by check points that once the first player crosses into the check point a timer will start that once ended each player who has not made it to the checkpoint yet will be teleported to the check point to help catch players up adding the time taken for each section to the players overall time as the player with the least amount time taken to complete the level will be the winner.
Glass Walk
The following section takes inspiration from the show Squid Game opening up to a section of floating platforms of glass as each of the player will have to guess and remember through trial and error with the choices of left and right each time presenting the possibility of falling off the air ship into the smog starting over again or progressing closer to the next check point.
Breakable Walls
The next section that the players will face is the breakable walls where the players will be presented by a row of three golden walls that the players will be able to brake though one of the walls that will always be randomly picked each play session.
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Within this section spinning hammers will be found between the breakable walls that can hit and send the player flying off the air ship if the players are unfortunate enough to make contact with the powerful hammers.
Rolling Cogs
Sticking to our games steam punk art style it was important to keep the race course interesting and feel unique with each section the players would race across with this in mind the following section has our player race down a long seemingly simple ramp down into the smog where players will jump down only to realise that two large cogs that will crush and knock the players from the air ship will fall and roll towards them leaving the players with only one option that being run or face being crushed.
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Players will be forced to jump into the smog where they will be pushed into the sky by fans below leading them onto the next section a steady ascend towards the final section where the players will face three lanes where large cogs will fall and roll along once again this time players will need to jump from lane to lane avoiding the oncoming cogs to reach the final stage.
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Final Stage
The final section of our games level consisted of a large gap the players would need to balance along pipes to reach the other side while avoiding wrecking balls and other players pushing them off the air ship into the abyss once over the pipes the players will need to race up one final oil ramp while avoiding objects that would knock them down the ramp.
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The first player to reach the end of the level is not necessarily the winner of the game this title belongs to the player who completed the levels sections in the fastest overall time although the player who dose finish this final section dose gain an advantage to mess with the remaining players this is in the form of a cannon that the player will take control of and will have a top down view of this final section and will be able to periodically shoot down on other players making their journey to the finish line harder.
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The design discission to include this final game mechanic was discussed by the team and it was agreed that players needed a way to be still involved in this final section while keeping it fun for each player this decision did prove to be a benefit to our game among playtesting.
Overall Design
Overall the final design of this level was something new to myself when approaching this genre of games and posed some challenges along the way although based on our choice of art style and setting the level itself was not demanding on the engine.
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The design of each section of the course was based around things that myself and the team had seen within game television shows that relay on this race course concept things such as Total Wipe Out and Takeshi's Castle where taken as inspiration for some of our games section along with looking towards other games that have unique section similar within them.
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Each part of the course was designed to feel unique from each other while still maintaining elements that the players would recognise as they progressed along the race all the while not being to long or complex that it would disturb game flow.
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Overall the level did receive positive feedback for how it was designed by play testers as most section of the level held the games flow fairly well with player engagement being really positive towards the different elements they had come to face within the game along with this the games level had a lot of attention and detail added to it to fit within to the games theme with floating ships and buildings within backgrounds and hallways and rooms being decorated with cogs and steam pipes to add to the games emersion.
Design And Documentation
While working within my team during this project a lot of my responsibility's at the beginning of the project was making sure each member of the team was fully aware of what kind of game we all intended on creating and making a clear plan on what was needed in order to complete our goals and reach our deadlines for this I had created a game design document that I have provided below to the team that covers the key points within our game.
While working on this project it was also a requirement that we present our progress as a team to our lectures and rest of our class within a formal presentation for this I kept track of our teams progress along with designing our games level I also created these project development presentations and presented them for our team showing our teams progress and how each element was coming along with the project.
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Within these documents below are some of our teams early production work for crash course along with images of early stages of the levels design shown in a white box these documents where made to show our progression along the products production pipeline.
Overview And Gameplay
Overall the project was a success as we had managed to successfully create a game within our given 12 week deadline along with overcoming the challenges of making our game multiplayer, during feedback we found the elements designed and implemented within the game received positive feedback along with this we as a team used this feedback to further improve elements of the game.
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I found while working on the project my biggest challenge was keeping the level flow balanced for all players for this serval elements where designed and implemented to make the game more balanced along with constant work on our games level as it was crucial these section of our level felt worth the work to be implemented and had to present the players with a new challenge each time while remaining simple enough that players would not find themself stuck breaking the game flow.
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The games trailer we created is listed below for you to view and see how our game had turned out in the end over all this video captures the element and spirit of Crash Course and shows off the collective efforts of our teams work.