ALT CTRL GAME - DESIGN WEEK
MY ROLES: GAME DESIGNER, 2D ARTIST
Team Members: Aunonna K., Tiggi P., Zephyr Z., Johnson D., Ken K.
Phonophobia (stylized as PHONO-PHOBIA) is an alt control game made by a team of 4 over the course of 5 days. Instead of using traditional controls, this game uses the player's voice as the controller, with different volume levels affecting the events of a playthrough. As this was my first Design Week, I learned a lot about team collaboration and how to manage a project over a short period of time. For this project, I worked on the game design and around half of the 2D art assets for this project.
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MY WORK
QUIET GHOST - DOLLY
DEFAULT
SCARED
ATTACK
SILENT GHOST - DAVE
DEFAULT
LEAVING
ATTACK
Above are the two ghost characters I designed for Phonophobia. They were made in a simple, hand-drawn 2D style based on our agreed-upon theme from the start of development. While they look simple, it took a while to come to these designs, as I and our second artist, Zephyr, were meant to design these while keeping in mind the player control that would go with them. For the Quiet ghost, Dolly, I had to make it look visually clear what volume level would be required from the player to scare her off. To do this, I gave her an expression, pose, and colour that could be read as "meek", "shy", or "nervous", to hopefully signify to the player that they would match with a quieter voice level, and be scared off by it.
I took a similar approach to the Silent ghost, nicknamed Dave, except I also tried to make him look unsettling by having his art style be slightly different, creating a feeling of "wrongness" or "otherness" from the other ghosts. Of course, there's only so much visuals can do to help, and sometimes players needed to learn how to interact with the characters in Phonophobia through trial and error.
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Since all our team members were artists, we wanted to keep the gameplay relatively simple, so we wouldn't struggle too much with implementation. This meant that some features had to be cut to make our deadline. While I show a "scared"/"leave" and "attack" sprite here for each character, we only used the default sprites and had the ghosts disappear after their interaction was done.
ENVIRONMENT ART & TEXTURES
DRAWERS
PAINTING
WALL SCONCES
FLOOR TEXTURE
Here are the environment assets I made for this game. We stuck with a 2D, sort of Paper-Mario and Don't Starve-like sketchy style for this game. As one of the main artists, I was in charge of defining the game's colour scheme and aesthetics; we ended up going with various shades of red, brown, gold, and black. I had some fun hiding some lore in background elements, like in the painting and a little portrait photo on the dresser, to suggest a little story about the ghost characters I made.
While making these, I learned about repeating tile textures, coordinating asset creation efforts with a second artist, and how to properly integrate textures and assets in Unity. A lot of what I learned about working with other artists and integrating assets was through trial and error. One of my teammates, Tiggi (a 3rd year student at the time) also really helped me out when I was just starting to learn about Unity and how to make use of assets in the engine. Knowing what I do now from this experience, I believe I will be able to make even better assets and games using Unity in the near future.
OTHER ASSETS
UI ICON
COVER ARTWORKS / TITLE
GAME DESIGN
For Phonophobia, I worked on the level design, art direction, and gameplay loop, among other things. While I initially created a sketch prototype of a different kind of alt control game (the cooking game shown above, to the left), I became excited about the ghost game idea, and quickly began to explore it during various brainstorming sessions.
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Above and to the right is a sketch made by another teammate, showing an early version of Phonophobia as a concept. We tried to ask and answer specific questions about the design to narrow down plans for development, but still ended up making changes along the way based on our learnings and feedback during design consults.
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Since we're Game Designers, this process of designing took up most of our time, and the production stage actually took up less than half of it. We spent a while figuring out things like the main gameplay loop (scaring ghosts with volume levels and getting points, taking damage, or dying), player motivation, controls, narrative, and player feedback (how the game would let players know that they did something meaningful in the game). A lot of work was done on whiteboards (some shown in the gallery below). It took a lot of verbal, written, and drawn-out communication until we were all on the same page, and were satisfied with the game concept. And even then, after development was "done", there were things we had wanted to add, but couldn't due to time or other factors.
A sketch I made of the room, with some ideas for assets and the theme. I also facilitating the discussion around who was doing what within our small team.
More concept work on the characters, style, room designs, and game controls.
A sketch of the doors, furniture setup, and some asset ideas.
A sketch I made of the room, with some ideas for assets and the theme. I also facilitating the discussion around who was doing what within our small team.
TAKEAWAYS
This was my first time making a digital game with a team, and I was so excited about it, but also so lost at first. Thanks to great guidance from professors, discussions with other design students, and passionate and helpful teammates, I was able to learn a lot about the process behind making a game over a short period of time. At the beginning, I knew very little about Unity, making assets optimized for games, and how to bring things together to function as a game.​
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This game was made with a team of 5, but it ended up with a team of 4, then a team of 3... Development was rough, but we pulled through with a lot of passion and effort from our team members. What we ended up with was a simple, endless game with a unique control scheme that players seemed to really like, based on reactions during the showcase.
Through discussions and application of things we covered in class, I was able to grasp things better and improve my skills in game design. It also helped to have a mix of students from different years, as we were able to bounce ideas from our personal lives and school learnings off of each other, and help each other grow. I also enjoyed meeting new people and learning how to work with them, even though I was nervous at first; it helped me break out of my shell a little bit, and I got to meet some cool people. Even though it was harder since our teammates kept leaving or not showing up, through the work that we did get done, such as asset creation and programming, I learned more about those aspects of game development, and I'm really grateful for that.​
Having alt ctrl be the first design challenge was a little overwhelming at first, but it turned out beneficial and really fun in the end. I would love to explore more alt ctrl games like this in the future, with the knowledge I gained from this experience.
