Roko
Roko is a small project made with a team of 3 people on Unity. The game took us around 180 hours to make over a semester. The player’s goal is to retrieve their beloved dog. They have to go around the town and ask their neighbors for help. There is many small mini-games included along the way such as : drawing a poster for your lost dog, chasing a weird stranger that has information about your dog’s whereabouts and even an arm-wrestling competition!
My role on this project
- Game designer : Level design, quest design, narrative design.
- Environment artist : Pixel art for props, buildings, interior and overall environment.
- Programmer: Scripts for mini-games and supported team for overall function of the game.
- Project management: agile method, sprints, scoping etc.
Design intention
When brainstorming, we knew we wanted to make something that looked innocent but was not. Undertale was very popular when we started making this game and it was one of our inspirations. When writing the story, we all knew the character wanted to look for his dog and that in the end, he would find out his dog is evil. When and how would he get to find that out? That’s where the challenge for me was to find different little quests the player would take in order to get to that point. We wanted to make the player a little confused and find mystery in that innocent story. The fun was in the narrative build-up and that final climax. The gameplay variety was important for me to make the game fun; the player chases someone, draws, puts up posters in town, talks to neighbors, and even stealthily infiltrates a very shady place.
Brainstorming and early design
- Brainstorming with the team (week 1).
- Writing the game's synopsis.
- Developed the main quest .
- Project management.
- Pitching the game and making a presentation.
Technical Documentation
- Defining features and its technicalities for scripting and the engine such as ; saving system, stealth system, HUD, UI and mini-games.
- Making a document and compiling every feature that the team hoped to have on the final game.
Making our beta
- Pixel art on Photoshop; environment, tiles, exterior and interior of buildings, props.
- Level design in Unity.
Coding and debugging
- Coding a chase mini-game
- Coding a drawing mini-game that resembles MSPaint.
- Helping my team with their scripts.
- Testing features and ensuring quality before presenting our game.
Public showcase
We had the opportunity to showcase our game at College de Maisonneuve and had over 50 people coming to try it out and/or talk to us about our work. We had plenty of feedback and comments from people. We were able to appreciate people's reactions in real-time and it was very gratifying for us after working on our own for 4 months.