Role
Project Manager
Game Designer + Programmer
Skills
Unity
C#
Gameplay
Cooperative
Puzzling + Platforming
Team
Gabriele Dal Cengio
Keegan George
Kenneth Juang
Anthony Liao
Check Out my Resurgence Design Document
Play the game here! (Note: It requires 2 controllers, ideally Playstation controllers.)
Summary
Resurgence was a semester-long project I completed in my Advanced Game Design class. The objective of the assignment was to utilize novelty mechanics to create a fun and unique gameplay experience. Designed around the challenge and fellowship game design aesthetics, Resurgence was the only cooperative game in the class, thereby creating a unique social experience.
Process + Challenges
During early brainstorming stages, I was inspired by the design process of Nintendo's Super Mario Odyssey. Everything about that game, concept, artistic theme, even the story, derives from the core gameplay mechanic of the player throwing their hat.
So, my teammates and I brainstormed interesting gameplay mechanics and let the concept materialize naturally as we refined our mechanics.
Our first step forward was the idea of allowing players to control the elements of their environment. Originally, we played with the concept of electricity: moving through circuits and activating mechanisms to overcome obstacles and solve puzzles.
This elemental concept got me thinking about how different elements interact with one another and how that combination could lead to a fun and social gaming environment. After further iteration and refinement, we landed on the idea of cooperative play between Water and Earth based characters.
We started talking about what kinds of abilities our two characters should have. Eventually, I came up with our final 4 abilities for our two players. The Earth character has the transpose ability (throw rock platforms around a level) and the fissure ability (open and close gaps in the ground). Our water character had the dive ability (able to navigate through pipes to reach otherwise unattainable locations in a level) and the geyser ability (creating powerful spouts of water that push platforms, players and enemies).
My next task was to implement the water abilities using the Unity editor and my own C# scripts. Geyser proved to be a bit of a challenge as I utilized Unity components I was not familiar with like Buoyancy Effector2D but eventually I had my desired functionality.
Lastly was level design. My task was to create our most challenging level. I wanted to use all mechanics available to me while creating a bit of a difficulty spike for our players. This level was to act as a final challenge before our final boss. I looked at creating a faster paced level that would create some timing challenges for our players as well as forcing players to use their abilities in an offensive manner.
Final Product
After hours of designing, iterating, playtesting and refining, we had a successful final result. Industry judges felt that we nailed the collaborative aspect of our game and that it was a joy to play with peers.
Furthermore, for our final showcase, we had invited a group of high school students to play all of the games in the class. Resurgence earned the People's Favourite Award as voted by our guests.
Had this project continued, I would have liked to implement a few more dynamic camera effects, like a paralax scroll, to create a more cohesive game environment and I would have liked to further merge the narrative aspect of our game with the gameplay by adding lore collectibles and little cutscenes.