Untitled Skeleton Game
Pilfer organs through the halls of a hospital in Untitled Skeleton Game! In this puzzle adventure you will find arms, a brain and a stomach, and use them to make your way to the milk at the end.🕑 Time: 7 weeks
🕹️ Platform: Desktop & Steam Deck
💻 Made with: Unreal Engine 5
👥 Team size: 12
🤸 Roles: Product owner, User Experience, Gameplay Design
🚧 Challenges: Adjusting to a change in the core concept
Caves, Shrooms & Crystals
Dash through caves in this fast paced FPS roguelike, look for chests to gain powerful items or buy your favourites from the shopkeeper.🕑 Time: 4 weeks
🕹️ Platform: Desktop
💻 Made with: Unreal Engine 5
👥 Team size: 12
🤸 Roles: Spokesperson, UI / UX Design
🚧 Challenges: Balancing time spent on features
Jimbo's Escape
Jimbo's Escape is a vertical 2D platformer where you have to evade a monster called the horde, as you run, jump, and grapple up a tall tower.🕑 Time: 2.5 weeks
🕹️ Platform: Desktop
💻 Made with: Unity
👥 Team size: 12
🤸 Roles: Lead level designer, Gameplay designer
🚧 Challenges: First ever project
Iron League
In Iron League you and a friend have 2 minutes to iron as many clothes as possible, in the hopes of winning the Iron League.🕑 Time: 4 weeks
🕹️ Platform: Mobile
💻 Made with: Unity
👥 Team size: 16
🤸 Roles: Product owner, Gameplay designer
🚧 Challenges: First time leading a project
The shop and UI of Caves, Shrooms & Crystals
Caves, Shrooms & Crystals marks my first time taking charge of UI/UX on my own, and had me doing the menus, UI, and shopkeeper mostly by myself. The shopkeeper especially is something I'm quite proud of. :)
The shop experience
The shopkeeper in Caves, Shrooms & Crystals was something I pushed hard to get into the game. Out of the 4 weeks we had for this project I spend 3 of them creating and polishing the shopkeeper, called Jimmy. The name Jimmys TWIDDIE DINKIES is a reference to one of my personal favourite games Plants VS Zombies.When the player finishes a level—as in they killed the last wave of enemies—Jimmy's tune will start playing faintly in the background, marking a big tonal shift in the music as it switches from intense battle music to a happy whistled tune. From there if the player approaches Jimmy the music will intensify and reach its most intense version when you are standing right next to him, switching to a more calm version while you are in the shop itself.
In Jimmy's shop you will immediately be greeted with an opening dialogue, where he makes sure the player knows that his assortment will be changed between levels. In later levels this dialogue is replaced with more jokey dialogue as the player is now already familiar with this mechanic.When you hover over an item in the shop, a card will appear that gives you a description of the items functionality, and when you click on the item it will be clearly selected with an outline, and the Buy button will be enabled. Jimmy will also have a humorous comment about the item, either about the origins of the item, or trying to connect its visual with its functionality. For example according to him, plungers are used to pull bullets out of the magazine faster, while practically they increase your fire rate.
After buying an item, a loud register sound effect will play to clearly indicate the transaction, and Jimmy will thank you for your purchase, as well as the previously for the player established "Upgrade Got" sound effect playing. You are able to buy the same item multiple times, but each time you buy it the price will go up, inviting the player to weigh the worth of getting the same item again, or multiple other items.As well as buying items, the player can choose to expand Jimmy's shop twice, by buying the locked item slot. When buying it, Jimmy will thank you for investing in his small business, and the shopping cart will visually grow in size. The expanded shop is also saved between levels, making it a worthwhile investment to make as early as possible.
User Experience & Untitled Skeleton Game
Untitled Skeleton Game was created on a tight time budget of 7 weeks, and with only one UI/UX designer on board focused on menus, this was where my own journey in UI/UX started, and I found my new passion.
HUD
Very quickly into development, our dedicated UI/UX designer created early drafts of what the in-game UI could look like in Figma, and this was implemented soon after. Through playtesting we found out though that most players would not notice the HUD or realise it had any function in the game, and especially for the brain item people would simply press the throw button to see if they had it in their inventory.This paired with our UI/UX designer being busy with other menus meant that I took up the task to alleviate this problem, and I successfully pitched a sketch I made in paint to him over Discord. I went into Blender to render out the relevant items and implemented them into Unreal Engine, which required little changing of the already existing functionality, as all I needed to do for this was overlap the previously separate images.We noticed immediate positive feedback, as people would now quickly notice the bigger HUD and actually use it. In a later update to the game I also fixed bugs with the HUD that made the stomach image sometimes not update.
Responsive interactions
Untitled Skeleton Game uses sound effects, camera effects, and button inputs to give responsive feedback to player interaction with the world. Some interactions have what we called mini-games, you would find them in the brain scanners and when picking up certain items. Mini-games would have UI attached to it to show player's progress in completing actions.
A simple interaction like flicking a lever is divided into,
Player presses button -> Interaction animation & sound effect -> Lever turning animation -> Power turns on, with sound -> Door opens
Balancing the time and intensity of these parts was very important, and helps create a sense of accomplishment in the player.