GOLD MANIA

The basic metagame architecture was already in place for Gold Mania. What we were missing was a variety of like-themed mini-games. While the art team worked hard on the re-theming, I got to work prototyping new games, and adapting other mini-games that our sister studio had already prototyped. I ended up making/updating 6 custom mini-games, and balance tuned our 2 others.

• Mini-games designed, coded, and implemented from scratch:
  • Walrus Bop
    • Helix Jump-like gameplay themed as falling down an orbital tower from space to earth.
    • Added a variety of tricky hazards like damaging fences, platforms, and spinners.
    • Implemented the art team’s Walrus character and electric shock visuals to make failure fun.
  • Smash Dash
    • A wipe-out style runner of stop and go to avoid all sorts of studio hazards. Fun physics launches, flattens, or cuts you up on failure.
    • Re-used other assets and environment visuals to add a total of 5 themed areas you can run through, each with their own type of hazard.
    • Implemented different difficulty versions of each hazard.
    • Set up hazard patterns that change based on score count.

• Mini-games redesigned and reimplemented from existing prototypes
  • Balloonatic

    • A Doodle-jump like game where your platforms are balloons! You only get so many bounces before your balloon pops, so keep jumping higher and higher!
    • Added the balloon pop mechanic, boost pads, and scaled the difficulty so balloon bounces tries decrease the higher your points get.
  • Chef’s Catch
    • A knife-catch game where the studio’s head chef throws everything at you, from cleavers to swordfish! Use your target umbrella to catch as many things as possible. The closer to the bullseye, the more points you get.
    • Updated base gameplay to include our chef character, and player character carrying the umbrella.
    • Heavy tuning and control adjustments.
  • Crash Hit
    • Blast the pillars holding up the pinatas without hitting the bounce pads. Make a wrong move, and your rockets fire right back at you.
    • Originally a building destruction game, we reskinned it as a pinata mascot blasting fun time!
    • Implemented characters, rebalanced the game, and implemented the different barrier and target setups.
  • Dunk King
    • A basketball shootout game where you are the ball! Keep up a streak to increase your points, and don’t miss the shot clock!
    • Added moving hoop, springboards, and pickups.

• Designed and implemented a power-up token mechanics for each mini-game.
  • Each game had a general power-up style of Special (unique for each game), Score Bonus, and Slow Down.
  • Implemented this feature for all 8 mini-games and made sure that each power-up worked consistently for each token type.
• Tuned and balanced all 8 mini-games with major UX improvements, and balance consistency.
  • Designed economy update for each mini-game to make early game easier, and dynamically ramp-up difficulty based on score to ensure closer competition on leaderboards, and encourage continued play. Makes the difference between high score and your score look much easier to achieve.
  • Gathered player data, test data, and adjusted all mini-games to land in a similar scoring range for economy consistency. Results were accurate to intended design and tuning.

Between implementing UI functionality, hooking up effects, and updating games for consistency, I had my hands in a lot of mini-game tech work. Our Tech Lead was an amazing resource for any questions I had, and I learned a lot of best practices doing my best to make my code consistent with the engineering team’s work.

• Implemented scroll bars and button implementation for the main game scroll.
• Updated all game player and npc models to use a consistent rig. This allowed us the ability to use the same rig for each game.
• Designed and prototyped a player character costume tech, with collectible outfits, colors, and faces.
  • Created a prototype make-up room where players could select their unlocked costume parts.
  • Prototype worked for all mini-game types, allowing players to bring their custom contestant character into each game.
• Created a reusable audience feature that react to player progress and streaks.
  • Triggered animations, SFX, and VFX based on a player’s score.