About:
mARbles is an mobile, interactive, multiplayer, augmented reality, battle-arena game, developed for the IPhone 8 during my Co-Op experience at Sheridan College. I was hired as an artist during the experience but took on many different roles within the small team of 5.
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The game play was inspired by the traditional way to play marbles (flicking marbles into a ring), while also experimenting with AR-Kit; Apples AR development tool.
The Game was demonstrated at EGLX in Toronto in October of 2018, with 15,000+ attendees.
My Role:
Game Designer, Artist, Programmer.
I was hired as an artist for the project but due to my multi-disciplinary experience in game development I took on many other roles too and a large portion of the programming. I took on a assistant project manager role as well, recommending which features to include and cut, and scheduling team meetings to talk about vision and task alignment. I also ended up learning how to use AR-Kit & UNet, and writing about half of the total code during production of the game.
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The ability to wear many different hats makes one very versatile in a small team setting, and I was very eager to do most tasks asked of me, as they made for great learning opportunities.
I was responsible for:
â–º Designing the UX of the game; accounting for accessibility and players with special needs (we created a special controller for those who are movement impaired)
â–º Designing and Implementing the combat, health, scoring and movement system,
â–º Learning and Implementing Unity's multiplayer service High Level API (UNet),
â–º Learning and Implementing AR Cameras with AR-Kit,
â–º Hosting play test sessions and collecting and analyzing data,
â–º Creating all Particle Effects,
â–º Designing and Implementing all UI,
â–º Creating all marketing art (posters, business cards, post cards, the logo and media art)
Design Goals:
The team I was hired onto originally did not have clear design goals at the start of production. They included features that met their individual portfolio needs, however this blew the scope to a large size and did not account for a concurrent design intention for the game. We redesigned the game together and using mood and story boards and decided to design for a player experience rather than developer needs.
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We established 3 pillars to our design and approach to production:
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Physical Player Movement - One of our main goals in using AR was to not have it be limited to a simple camera perspective. We wanted to encourage constant movement to our players, and ensured the best method of combat was granted to the players who moved around the arena the most!
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Fast Paced Combat - We also wanted to ensure that rounds would not drag on or lull, so we designed our marble movement and combat to be fast and engaging. Players can attack with a rapid dash, can jump to dodge, or can counter with a spin that launches their opponent away. We aimed to keep rounds short at 1 minute and 30 seconds to allow new players to join sessions quickly and easily.
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Competition - Being a combat game, we wanted to our players to feel successful whenever they bested an opponent. We supported this pillar by adding a moving player scoreboard, so players always knew where they compared with others. We also made sure there were plenty of effects whenever a player knocked out another player, and that the victory was written in a kill feed on every players device.
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Post Mortem:
Scope and Design intent
I was hired on to this project by a team of 4 post graduate students, who were just starting production on their capstone (thesis) project. Before I was hired there were about 20 - 24 medium to large features that were expected to be implemented in a 4-month time frame while working full time hours (40 hrs a week). This including:
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developing a cosmetic skin system that players were to be able to gamble with during matches,
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3 unique marble types with unique physics reactions; each skin also changes based on the type,
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3 fully developed maps with unique themes and custom hazards for each map,
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4 player mobile multiplayer with a chat lobby & bargain system,
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cross-platform live map editing integrated with HoloLens,
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and a streaming system .
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(just to name a few features).
The team of designers I worked for, despite being incredibly talented, had no previous experience in developing a long term project, and also did not have a core game play mechanic or loop. Their scope was ambitious to say the least but also lacked design intention and direction; these were some red flags that I addressed soon into the production.
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I was first tasked with designing skins and candy-land themed maps for the game, however I had no idea who or what I was designing for. I worked for a week haphazardly, asking for feedback on drawings and concepts with mixed reviews and confusion. I asked for clarity on what was expected of me and of what the games core game play mechanics were. I had no idea how "battle" on the maps was meant to function as the methods in battle had not been defined, only that there was a Rock Paper Scissors hierarchy system of damage (based on marble type) and that taking enough damage changed the marble type.
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The entire team, being aimless in development for 2-3 weeks due to being overwhelmed with so many features, needed focus. I pitched to redesign the game by cutting out all non-essential features and by focusing on 3 core design pillars. I recommended we take inspiration from the traditional marbles game and to collect research and data on similar style/genre games.
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I quickly story-boarded what 1 round of experiencing game-play may look like and the team was on board and on track to begin
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After I reworked the game we had a much smaller feature list that managed to get implemented before the team's graduation deadline.
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The features we decided to keep and successfully implemented were:
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live local multiplayer,
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collision based marble combat,
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a spatially-synchronized augmented reality arena,
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a transformation in the arena itself
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The lesson we all learned was that less is more and that without clear intent, research, and vision, all there is to develop is wanton features and mechanics that the player will not seek out. I had to learn a lot about taking initiative and stepping up to a leadership position when none was present. I had to balance those learned skills with the fact that this wasn't MY thesis project, but rather OUR collective game, requiring me to know when to take a backseat and let those that hold stake take the reigns.