Project & Role

During my time at working at Glasgow Caledonian University, I was involved in a short research project which aimed to see whether games could be used to better inform customers of long-term service agreements and their benefits (i.e. long-term monthly / yearly service plans vs one-off purchases) After developing a prototype, I was contacted by Howden to produce a further version for their promotional usage.

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In the game, the player plays short rounds and is required to run around and keep their 10 machines running. 1 machine breaks down every couple of seconds and the player is scored based on how many machines they can keep online at one time. The player is able to repair a machine by running over to its nearby terminal and interacting with it.

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Initially, this task is particularly (and intentionally!) difficult as the player doesn't know where their broken machines are, nor when one is about to break down. To highlight and demonstrate the benefits of the long-term service agreements and services, the player is given upgrades to choose from after each round the play. Each upgrade attempts to roughly and closely mimic the benefits of the real-life service and counterpart, such as being able to predict when a machine is about to break down, highlight what specific machines are at risk of breaking down and providing general maintenance and optimisations to ensure they run more efficiently for longer. After each subsequent round, the player's performance and score often increases as a result of these accumulated upgrades / services, potentially demonstrating and highlighting the benefits of these real services to customers. After 4 rounds, and having received all the upgrades, the player receives a summary over their scores - their uptime.

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I produced a prototype in around a month in Unity, making use of Asset Store assets to heavily speed up production so I could focus more on design and bespoke element.

Some of my roles and tasks for this project included:

• With academic supervision, overseeing the general creative direction and production of the game

• Designing and prototyping features and levels to meet the research aims of the project

• Iteratively designing and testing builds of the game with clients and testers

• Sourcing and utilising assets on Unity Asset Store to speed up development

• Implementing various assets including models, materials, particle effects, sound clips and more.

• Creating scripts to manage the overall game loop, flow and various game managers

• Designing and implementing the UI based on its requirements, functionality and variable screen sizes / ratios

• Designing and developing the game for both mobile and web / PC platforms

• Building to Android, iOS and WebGL for testing and distribution

• Designing and implementing a cross-platform leaderboard system using Firebase by Google and REST API

• Fixing bugs and optimising the game to run better on lower-end devices

Some the main Unity assets I used (and highly recommend!)

• TopDown Engine by More Mountains

• Doozy UI by Doozy Entertainment

• DOTween Pro by Demigiant

• Epic Toon FX by Archanor VFX

• Procedural UI Image and UI Gradient by Josh H