Purebread Purrsuit

Game Genre

Endless Runner, Mobile

• Purebread Purrsuit was the final project for my rapid prototype production class; the goal for the two weeks spent on this project being to create a game for the mobile market

  • Our team looked at a variety of mobile game archetypes to figure out which set of mechanics we could repurpose with our own design, eventually settling on an endless runner

    • We decided to justify the mechanics for Purebread Purrsuit through the narrative of a sentient bread-based cat (as cats tend to "loaf") escaping the bakery it was made in before it can be trapped in a display case

    • We made the procedurally generating level based off of the design bakery from lo-fi videos, and made the obstacles to be standard items in a bakery- rolling pins and kitchen knives

      
      

Game Engine

Unity 2022.3.0

• Given the short timeframe given to projects as part of the rapid prototype production class, we opted to utilize Unity for this project in order to rapidly script the procedural generation algorithms and general code architecture

  • This allowed us to spend a larger amount of time on increasing the production value of Purebread Purrsuit through set dressing level chunks, dynamic camera movements, and SFX for UI feedback

Responsibilities

Technical Designer, Producer

• As a technical designer, was primarily responsible for the core gameplay loop, UI development, and the 3 C's

  • For the core gameplay loop, I worked on the various obstacles that the player would come across during gameplay- the rolling pins that needed to be jumped over and the knives that needed to be dodged by moving left or right

    • While the rolling pins were pre-spawned pools of physics objects that would roll naturally, the knives moved according to a kinematic equation to make them flip and land in the ground tip down, ensuring they were mostly vertical and could be navigated around

  • I also worked on scripts that would save the currency that the player earned during runs, and would discard any progress made during a run if the application was closed midway or if the player returned to the main menu early; this value was then checked and queried at the shop to ensure the player could actually buy a given skin

  • For the UI, I opted for a more diegetic menu for the shop, animating the camera to physically move within the same set/scene as opposed to pulling up a static canvas on the screen; to keep navigation simple during gameplay, however, I applied a transparent overlay so the player could still see what was in front of them should they unpause the game, and opted for static buttons instead

  • 3 C's

    • Character

      • During the conceptualizing phase of the project, I worked with the artists on the team to create rough concept sketches of various bread types and which cat breeds they'd mix well with visually; these then eventually became the final version of the player's default skin, the "Classic Loaf", with other concepts becoming purchasable skins

        

        

        
        

      • In addition, I had also created a controller script with multiple fields in order to easily adjust any traits related to movement (such as the initial movement speed, speed ramp-up factor, and forces for jumping and moving laterally), and provide elements in the UI with the necessary values, such as lives, score, and existing currency

        

        
        

    • Controller

      • A large aspect of developing Purebread Purrsuit as a mobile game was that only a small subset of our team actually had devices which we could use Unity Remote for testing without outright building the entire project. To avoid have to spend large portions of time building to test a single feature, I modified the controller and input management scripts to be usable with a mouse as the single-finger touch input for testing

        • I also worked with our programmer to to figure out the API for Unity's mobile integrations in order to utilize features such as the gyroscope to enable horizontal movement and turning

    • Camera

      • Within the main menu, I created an animator for the camera with the intent to make the start and shop menus diegetic within the same scene, and to apply a small animation when the start button was pressed (in order to create a less abrupt transition between the start menu and gameplay scenes)

      • For gameplay, I created a camera controller to have the camera follow the player during the run, altering the rotational values to always keep the player in view while also dampening rapid movements for a smoother interpolation

        

        
        

• As a producer, I was responsible for assigning tasks and ensuring we maintained a steady rate of progress; as time went on, certain roadblocks required I find creative solutions to prevent roadblocks

  • Midway through our first week, our level designer had gotten sick, and in order to reduce their workload, we reduced the scope on the individual pieces for procedural generation by reusing the same base and set dressing it a variety of times

  • Additionally, given our lack of a proper animator, I took it upon myself to learn procedural animation for obstacles, and basic keyframed animation in order to control the camera in the main menu

  • Outside of mitigating roadblocks, I handled the integration of art assets into the engine and compiling them in the necessary scenes

Duration

1 Month

• Initially, this project was given a two week deadline as part of the rapid prototype production class.

  • The first week ended with a progress check-in with the professor, where feedback was provided based off of what made it into engine at the time

  • The second week concluded with a final presentation and demo to the rest of the class, including guest lecturer Matthew Lawrence, an industry veteran in game design for the mobile market

    • Much to our joy, our project was regarded to be incredibly well polished and easily read as a traditional mobile game with built-in spots for monetization if it was formally published

• Given the positive feedback to Purebread Purrsuit, I opted to continue working on it for an additional two weeks during in order to bring in better SFX and new features for more comprehensive user feedback

  • After sufficient work was done, this version 2 was then published to Itch: https://possumhomie.itch.io/purebread-purrsuit

    
    

Lessons Learned

• The majority of the lessons learned on this project involved me branching out slightly into other tracks and learning more about their internal processes

  • The earlier sections of the project taught me much of the 3D art pipeline from concept to the game-ready asset, and enlightened me to areas where we could integrate in-progress assets to both get a better idea of what the final product would look like and to better test features reliant on geometry

  • Between having a singular programmer and our level designer out of commission, our group naturally gravitated towards the idea of proc gen within what would eventually become Purebread Purrsuit, leading us to learn many techniques and algorithms for optimization and runtime generation

• Between the feedback given by Matthew and feedback from my peers during the 2 post-class weeks before publishing, I also gained a better eye for production value and identifying places where I could improve it in my future projects