Zoey and the Magic Paintbrush
OVERVIEW
Zoey and the Magic Paintbrush is a strategic, line-riding, puzzle game where players can help Zoey, a magic princess unlock portals by painting lines with their fingers to collect gems. Players can paint Green-Lines to guide Zoey slowly across a level or stop her momentum, and Red-Lines to accelerate her over jumps or across the screen.
PROJECT INFO
TEAM INFO
RESPONSIBILITIES
GAME: Zoey and the Magic Paintbrush
GENRE: Puzzle
ENGINE: Unity 2018.4.1
DEVELOPMENT TIME: 7 Weeks
PLATFORM: Android
TEAM SIZE: 4 Developers
PRODUCTION: 1 Producers
DESIGN: 1 Designers
PROGRAM: 1 Programmers
ART: 1 Artists
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Designed, created and iterated 5 of 12 levels with a smooth difficulty progression and engaging puzzle solving experience
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Wrote and maintained Level Design Documentation, Game Design Documentation and playtest reports
TRAILER and SCREENSHOTS
MY WORK
The figure below is our skill progression chart. All objects were listed on the first column on the right side of the table, and mechanics linked with them on the second column. To help players mastering all skills, we used "Teach-Reinforce-Repeat" loop. It means that when we first introduced a new mechanic to players, then we reinforced and repeated it at the following levels. We also limited the number of new mechanics each level to smooth the difficulty curve.
As a Level Designer, I took responsibility for Level 8 to Level 12.The figure below is the Level 8 layout.
Level 8 introduces the Anti-magic Zone, as a purple cloud where players cannot paint and it teaches players how to go through the purple cloud by means of a leap.
When players start the level, they spawn from A1 start portal with an arrow. Players draw lines to collect the B1 and B2 gem. Then players draw a red line to leap through the C1 purple cloud and collect the B3 gem. With the help of other lines and walls, players reach the A2 end portal.
Level 9 reinforces the Anti-magic Zones by two different angles of leaps.
When players start the level, they spawn from A1 start portal with an arrow. Players draw a red line to accelerate. Then players draw a green line to control their leap through the C1 purple cloud and collect the B1 gem. After using another green line and red line to collect the B2 gem, players leap through the C2 purple cloud and collect the B4 star. With the help of other lines and walls, players collect the B3 gem reach the A2 end portal.
Level 10 reinforces the Anti-magic Zones and it challenges players to reach the end portal by blocking the top, bottom and left.
When players start the level, they spawn from A1 start portal with an arrow. Players draw a red line to leap through the C1 purple cloud and collect the B4 star and B1 gem. Then players get the B2 and B3 gem by riding on green lines. With the precise control of angle, players use another red line to leap and collect the B3 gem and reach the A2 end portal.
Level 11 emphasizes using all kinds of lines and gravity to go through the Anti-magic Zones.
When players start the level, they spawn from A1 start portal with an arrow. Players draw green lines to using existing walls and gravity. The B1, B2 and B3 gem is collected as players going through the C1 and c2 purple cloud. Then players use another red line to leap and collect the B4 star and reach the A2 end portal.
Level 12 is the last and hardest level of the game with all mechanics.
When players start the level, they spawn from A1 start portal with an arrow. Players draw a red line to climb up the rape and collect the B1 gem. Then players use another red line to leap through the C1 purple cloud and collect the B2 gem. After that, players draw green lines to collect the B3 gem and B4 star and reach the A2 end portal.
PERSONAL POST MORTEM
What went well
Kept adding new ideas to our game
When I found lots of our negative feedback is too much freedom and lack of limitation, I suggest adding an area where players cannot draw in it. It turned out a good idea and became one of our key features in our high-skill levels.
Open to feedbacks
From the very first period, I tried to obtain feedbacks from not only team members but also Professors, friends, and classmates. These feedbacks helped me and our team liberating and improving our game and ourselves. One of the feedbacks is "moving and rotation obstacles" are too difficult to predict. After discussed, we removed all time elements in our game. This decision made our game's usability improved a lot.
Use external resources
Try to use external resources was one of the most correct choices I made in this project. From our stakeholder Prof. Luna, I got a lot of help in team communication, culture gap, and conveyance improvement. From Prof. Despain, I got so much professional advice in technical documentation writing. From my LD classmates, I got very useful feedback about LD.
What went wrong
Wrongly evaluated the difficulty of levels
In POCG and Alpha period, one of the main issues was the difficulty of levels. From the feedback and my playtest experience in other teams’ games, I realized after developed for months; I lost the feeling of difficulty as a normal player for our game. Every game developer should forget his/her skills learned before in playtest and pay attention to the playtester’s feedback.
No enough alternative levels
When I created levels for Alpha sprint, we had a level review, level playtest and level literation. But we lacked the level selection. It means we should create as many levels as we can and then select best from them. It’s not enough to only make eight levels and choose six levels to polish. The best way is to make 12 or more levels and put the best six levels into our game.
Unconscious design
Please always ask why to design like this rather than following your intuition. For example, we added the moving obstacle and spite in the prototype phase, but we didn't know how to use these mechanics. Without solid gameplay, such features only added all people’s workload, but not the fun of the game itself. As described in the previous, finally we removed them.
What I Learned
Improved communication
In POCG period, I met some communication issues. Some reasons led to this situation: one is the language or culture issue. It’s quite different comparing China game company and our group in the working atmosphere. Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep the same page with team members in the first month.
Another one was about different ideas. We all wanted to make a great game. But there were still different ideas about how to make it. In POCG, some team members wanted to push the project that they would like to add more extra hours than I wanted. After we talked with each other and stakeholder, we understood each other better and knew how to compromise between different needs.
Improved Unity skills
I still remembered when I joined Game Jam in my first week in Guildhall. I knew so little about Unity that I could almost do nothing for our project. In the TGP, I learned and implemented canvas, particle effect, script, animation, prefabs and sound effect in Unity. And I had a clearer concept of the Unity development pipeline, especially how to work together with artist and programmer as a level designer.
Improved teamwork spirit
Even though I worked in a game company before, my teamwork spirit improved through this project. Because our team only had four people, teamwork was even more important than working on a big project with many people. Respecting people, understanding people and helping each other are what I learned from it.