48hr Game Jam: Mass Attraction

Overview

As an extra curricular activity, employees at Blizzard Entertainment run game jams once or twice a year. I took part in the previous game jam to get firsthand experience working directly on a game that would be judged by fellow coworkers. This particular game jam took place over 48 working hours. 

I spent the week prior to the game jam deep diving into learning Unity and GitHub.

Working with a game designer, QA tester, and infrastructure engineer, we ideated various game mechanics that were simple enough to combine in a short amount of time, and of course still being fun. We landed on a concept similar to Geometry Wars, but added a mechanic where you used the scrap of your enemies to reinforce your own ship’s health. The game play was simple: destroy enemy ships and attract their scrap metal through magnetism to reinforce your ship. Avoid losing all your scrap metal for the duration of the match to hit the win state.

Through a number of whiteboarding sessions, paper prototypes, and quick adjustments in Unity, we landed on our final game right within the 48 hour limit. My particular focus was on:

• Designing for world space and screen space.

• Emphasizing quick onboarding and recovery from fail states.

• Leveraging SFX and VFX to communicate gameplay intent.

*Recommended to play in fullscreen.

My Role & Responsibilities

• Game UI design

• UX design

• SFX editing and mixing

Outcomes

Our game was one of the more well reviewed games during judging, and it solidified my desire to make the move to design within game development.