Colossal Chaos

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Pre Beta trailer for “Colossal Chaos”, a 10 week long school project, created with Unity

Team size:
6 team members, 1 designer

Project length:
10 weeks

Contribution and role:
Gameplay-& general design, product owner, level design, original concept,

Colossal Chaos is a first year project made for Gotland Game Conference 2019 with the intention of an application to Ctrl Alt GDC. The game is built with the requirements of being an arcade experience without any traditional input device.

In the game the player find itself on the shoulders of a giant who is trying to destroy your town. To save your hometown your aim is to steer the giant in a path through the town whilst destroying as little as possible.

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The input

To fit the theme of an arcade game the input of Colossal Chaos is designed communicate the in game struggle of holding on to a rampaging giant.

The design and construction of the giants head was carefully thought through to present itself as an obstacle for the player, both for adults and children. Finding a good size for it took a lot of trial and error, but in the end we managed to find a manageable size and shape, for most…

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In the game the giant is struggling to get the player off its shoulders and the sheer size of the physical controller is meant to make the player feel the same struggle of keeping oneself hanging on to the giant.

The input is based on a very simple construction: a mouse scanning rotation on a rod for direction, buttons for eyes and in the ears. To immerse the player even more a vibrating subwoofer, triggered with each step, was fitted into the seat of the input.

During GGC we added a high score screen to the game which made the game a lot more competitive than originally intended.

Designing the input to fit the game was an interesting and funny experience. A lot of work went into finding a fitting size for it to present it self as enough of an obstacle but still feel intuitive enough for most to be able to play the game. For the sake of accessibility the booth also included a smaller, handheld, version of the head.

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Gamification of a town

As the project took place in Visby the town also became the inspiration for the environment.

The initial design of the level is based on a circular maze with different levels of intense obstructions. The maze is divided into smaller areas to save memory and is designed to lead the player to the finish line without any obvious guidance.

I wanted to steer and show but not making the player feel forced to aim for the actual goal.

Initial level design, environmental assets and the base idea of maze shape

The circular shape of the town is designed to make players experience a similar experience for each playthrough. Through the circular design the player is ‘forced’ to walk through the same length of a very occupied space and the experience of the game would be as ‘fair’ as possible for all players.

Attraction points in the town level

The level and player experience is designed with certain buildings functioning as attraction points for the giant. These buildings has an area of effect (yellow spheres in picture) and when the player is within vicinity of these buildings the giant will automatically try to reach and destroy them.

The placement of these buildings is meant to work as a force of momentum, a drag force, as well as another influence of the control of the giants rampage.

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Learning outcome

• Personal health. My biggest takeaway from this project is how hard it is to keep team members motivation on point throughout a project. During the project we had several issues with motivation being next to none, unaccounted personal issues and mental health. We have to remember that we are working with people and if the situation is not beneficial for the whole team you will struggle…
• Scope size: Early on in the project we realized that the scope needed adjustment for us to be able to produce a WIP. Down scoping has since became one of the first thing I try to keep in mind.
• Dynamic development: All projects will change during the course of time. After this project I feel more keen towards killing my darlings. At the beginning I was a bit to attached to my original concept and had a hard time scrapping parts of it. During the project I learnt to not attach myself too much on the ideas I have and rather try to see development as a continually interchangeable direction.

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Want to know more about the project? Contact me!