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Birthday Dash - Short PC Game (UE4)

Goals for the game

There were different goals that I set myself with this project. It was being made as a birthday gift, so my main goals were:

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  • Have it ready by the birthday date

  • Have birthday messages from family members as rewards for completing challenges

  • Have a simple design so that its easy to pick up and play without much instruction

  • Find a sweet spot in terms of game length so that it doesn't take too long to complete

  • Make it easy to play but challenging enough

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I'll go into further detail for each of these, but these were the guidelines to follow when designing the game.

Initial design

So to no surprise, things did not turn out as initially planned. Things happen, things change, time creeps up on you and you are forced to make decisions regarding your designs. So yeah, the idea with which I started is not the one that I ended with. But its fine, the game was still a success and that's what matters. 

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So how different was the initial design? Well, let me show you.

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The game was going to have enemies in the form of COVID-19 virus cells (I know, bare with me). At the start, the player would pick up an alcohol spray bottle which would be used to get rid of the COVID cells. This would have been the intro room, which would lead into the first challenge with a caged-up big birthday present in the center, surrounded by cells. After eliminating the cells, the cage would open and the present would show the first Birthday message from a family member.  

After the first introduction room, you would go into a corridor that would lead into the next room. These corridors would introduce a new type of obstacle to prepare the player for what the coming challenge room would be. This is what the formula was going to be for the game until you reach a final room with a mixture of all obstacles that were faced through the game. However, this was scrapped in preference of more of an "open-world" design where the player would be able to choose in what order to complete the rooms. There were 2 main reasons for this:

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  1. This would allow the player to try out different rooms in any order, allowing them to go and try a different room if they find the one they are currently in too challenging, leaving it for later on.

  2. Time constraints. Implementing "enemies" and "weapons" would significantly increase my dev time no matter how simple they may be, and I was already against the clock. So instead I decided to focus on making environmental challenges that would be quick and easy to do and iterate if needed.

Challenge Room 4

Final result

In the end, the game consisted of 4 "challenge" rooms that could be tackled in any order. Once these rooms were completed, this would unlock a birthday message from a family member as well as unlock 1 lock from the main hub room door. Once all rooms were completed, the main hub room door would unlock, accessing the final birthday messages from the game (In this case a message from the parents and boyfriend).

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The game was received very well. I managed to create a fun experience that was in itself a birthday present, but making it so that it also had messages from family members that would normally be celebrating with her (This was during pandemic lockdown season) elevated the game even further.

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