Game Mechanics - Project 3 - Swim

This is the third project by Team Blue for Northeastern's Game Mechanics (GAME4000) class. While improving on visual scripting abilities, our goal was to design a compound mechanic designed around an anchor. These being our swimming mechanic and oxygen (HP) mechanics, respectively.

CONTROLS:

a - move left

d - move right

space  + (w/a/s/d) [WHEN UNDERWATER] - swim

OBJECTIVE:

Collect oxygen tanks to replenish your oxygen meter and reach the end!

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FORMAL OVERVIEW:

Resource name: Healing Collectable & Time Resource Description: Every time a player collides with an oxygen tank, their oxygen meter (which at a base level, acts as a health point bar) increases. Over time, a player’s oxygen meter will decrease. Once the oxygen meter is completely depleted due to not picking up oxygen tanks in time, the player will die and the level will restart. Mechanic name: Omni-directional Swim & Health Bar Mechanic description: The oxygen meter acts as a health point bar. Overtime, the health bar will deplete if the player is underwater. In combination with this, our player has omni-directional movement while underwater (they can move vertically and horizontally). Implementation description: The health bar slowly depletes as the player is submerged underwater. If their oxygen meter reaches 0, they will die. In order to prevent this, the player must collect healing collectable items (oxygen tanks) to regenerate their health bar. To do this, players use their omni-directional swim movement to move around the obstacle course, trying to reach the end without dying. Many oxygen tanks are placed around the obstacle course. Description of how your pattern(s) relate to the prototype. (Include link to pattern) Analysis describing the implications of the resource and mechanic explored in your playable prototype. - https://patternlanguageforgamedesign.com/PatternLibraryApp/PatternLibrary/1973 Our prototype explores this pattern extremely directly. As the player is trying to make it to the end of the obstacle course, their health slowly depletes over time underwater. This adds stress to the player as the lack of health causes a feeling of instability and panic. By adding healing items around the course, players can relieve their stress by collecting these oxygen tanks and can further their own gameplay. We specifically placed a very limited amount of oxygen tanks around the course to cause a feeling of stress and panic to our players. However, we added JUST enough of these oxygen tanks to create a rhythm between stress and relief. There are many implications to this - the amount of healing resources and the time it takes to lose health can greatly affect a player’s experience and how they feel while playing. A lack of healing items can cause high stress scenarios if the player is at low health. A surplus of healing items makes health points feel extremely expendable. Omni-directional movement was added to fit the underwater theme that we had, but it also has a few implications in regards to the time resource. Since our player has more options to move vertically, it takes less time for the player to get through the obstacle course after they master controlling the movement. This makes the game slightly less stressful as the player only has to rely on mechanical skill to get to the next oxygen tank.