Samuel Schlenker Game Design
Project Overview
A spaceship transporting a crew of humans in cryo-sleep is suddenly hit by a rogue asteroid! The ship's sentient operating system, L.O.U, is incapacitated. You, a small communications robot named ChitChat, are the only one on the ship able to receive L.O.U.'s distress message. In Patching Through, as ChitChat you will navigate gate the ship to connect with other robots, solve puzzles, and repair key areas to bring L.O.U. back online in time to save the humans before all systems go critical!
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Team Size: 5
Major Contributions
Gameplay Design
Designed gameplay interactions and overall gameplay flow, working with UI and programming team members to polish the experience.
Level Design
Designed and created concept sheets for level and worked with scriptors and artists to turn concepts into fully realized levels.
Visualization
Helped with the visualization and concepting phase of development, specifically the environment references.
Finished Levels/puzzles
In the current build of the game, the levels are near-complete visually as well as functionally. My current focus is to polish up the flow of the puzzles as well as several gameplay related bugs. These levels are playable in the gameplay demo available on itch.io right now; however, the final release should be approaching in the next few weeks.
Level prototyping
The next step of the design process was to create functional prototypes of the levels within the Unity Editor. These early prototypes were the subject of much play-testing and feedback, which helped inform the many subtle changes made to the level design. These prototypes are meant to be functional first and foremost with little concern for visual fidelity. This was done to ensure a quick turn-around on a tight deadline.
Level Conceptualization
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After the team settled on the gameplay direction, it was my job as the systems designer to create a set of puzzles that would compose the core loop of our gameplay experience. These level concepts went through several iterations before the design was finalized. Once the final level layout was decided, I had to annotate my design concepts with instructions for both the artists and the programmers so that the concepts could be realized.
Brainstorming/Paper Prototyping
After the core idea behind our project was solidified, it was our task as a team to begin the process of paper prototyping our project so that we could begin to grasp how our game might play. I designed the paper prototype myself, and also began the process of sketching ideas for other levels/puzzles in our game. In fact, all three of these early images you see ended up turning into levels in our final game.
Credits
Yasmin Haq
Lee Rodgers
Nate Hebert
Samuel Schlenker
Environment Artist, Prop Artist, UI Artist
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Character Designer, Character Animator
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Gameplay Programmer, Systems Designer, Audio Designer
Level Designer, Gameplay Designer
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