CHUCK A CHICK
Chuck A Chick is a mobile game project, made with a team of 4 students : 2 Game Designers, 2 Game Artists. We worked during two months, during Winter 2018.
We wanted to have an efficient concept, a game that you could launch & play whenever you wanted (a game as a service), with quick fun, and a simple, intuitive controller.
You can try out the .apk Alpha version until the game's polished and out on the Play Store ! (Only on Android for now, sorry ! )
Gameplay video from the Alpha version.
The game's subject to a bunch of UI changes.
SUMMARY :
Specs : Mobile game / Solo / 2D / Top Camera / Tap & Drag / Made with Unity Engine
Genre : Arcade / Casual
Game Pitch :
Eggs are appearing on a treadmill. You'll have to tap them to pop their shells, liberating a chick.
These chicks will earn you good, precious moolah when entering the... 'Secret Chick Machine'.
If an intact egg reaches the machine, it'll damage it. When the machine's broken, it's game over.
But no worries : chick money = buying more chick powers = making even more chick money. Insane !
MY TASKS
Game Design - Balancing - Economic Game Design - Sound Design
GAME DESIGN
A big pillar of the game design here was to create a super simple, yet addictive system, to iterate on it, adding power-ups, and magic chicks.
We wanted to create synergies within these chicks, each of these synergies corresponding to a major playstyle we witnessed during numerous playtests, so that we could please a maximum amount of players.
However, it appeared that this was too complex for a game that we wanted simple and approachable. Plus, we needed a limited number of different visual feedback, for production's sake. So, our process was finding and testing an efficient base gameplay loop, then iterating to find cool power-ups to meliorate the experience and catch the player attention, enhancing replayability as well as the addictive aspect of the game. And after this, we just cut all the mechanics that weren't intuitive enough.
A good brainstorm later, the game intentions were settled and
we could start working on the power-ups.
The game can quickly become a mess,
and get further away from a true casual aspect.
BALANCING
It's pretty simple : We have 3 variables that are important during the gameplay : Money, Treadmill speed, and Egg number.
Thus the challenge was to design magic chick and power-up effects that were well-balanced, and advantage those values following the player's wanted playstyle.
But as it is a mobile service game, of course the balancing is made in a way that the game's rather friendly, and seems easy since the first games, to lure the player for more playtime.
It isn't really balancing, but we did a bit of work on how to monetize the game, where/when/at what rate to place ads. It suits a little well the balancing, as we need to find the good ads rate & positions to not frustrate the player.
SOUND DESIGN
As on my other projects, I'm trying to make all the sounds myself, with my own means, so that every SFX belongs to me, and I can use it freely on other projects.
I don't have much to say about the Sound Design otherwise : I had to made simple, recognizable sounds, which most of them are Audacity/FL Studio retouched version of me doing sounds with my mouth or hitting objects between them, registered at home.
*pop*
The team was composed of 2 Game Design & Management section students, and 2 Game Art section students :