Bad Hare Day

Details

Role: Game Designer, Level Designer
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Development time: 4 weeks
​Team: 3 Designers, 3 Artists, 3 Programmers

Contributions: 
  • Game Design
  • Level Design (Level 2)
  • Camera System
  • Box moving system
  • Sound Design + implementation
Bad Hare Day is a 2.5D puzzle side scroller where the player manipulate gravity on themselves, as well as other objects in the world, in order to progress.

Mechanics &
​Gameplay Components

All mechanics had to pass one important criteria to be considerd; They have to work in conjunction with the gravity swapping mechanics.

We did not want to fill up the game with mechanics that didnt have anything to do with the core mechanic.  Guiding beam, scrapped. Breaking ground, approved, since you need to move it above and swap gravity with the object to make it have enough speed.

since apposing the laws of physics is inheritly confusing we decided to ease the player in to the idea of opposing gravity, by taking away their control over it. 

Gravity Swapper

  • Enter swapper to swap gravity on yourself or an object
  • the only way to swap gravity in the beginning, to ease the player in to the concept​

​Character Swap

  • Swap gravity with yourself and an object with the opposite gravitation

Object Swap

  • Swap gravity of two objects with opposite gravitation

Push and Pull

  • Push or pull boxes to move them

Destroy Ground

  • Heavy boxes can destroy fragile ground

Death

  • Touching thorns kill you
  • Objects falling on you, kill you
  • When you die you respawn at latest checkpoint

Boxes

  • Enter swapper to swap gravity on yourself or an object

Boxes

  • Enter swapper to swap gravity on yourself or an object

Design Process

Ideation
When discussing a new machenic I always run a quick "playtest" in my head, trying to figure out what interactions this mechanic might enable. When doing this for the gravity manipulation mechanic, I concluded three things:
  1. being able to freely manipulate gravity on objects would be difficult to level design with
  2. the mechanic thus needed to be problematized
  3. exchanging gravity with another object would add consequence for player actions, and produce problems for the player, problems we could build puzzles around. (picture showing free swaping vs non free swaping)

Prototyping

To further develop the mechanics, I built a paper prototype. This enabled us to test mechanics, see the required size ratio of game objects, deciding player jump height, and start level designing. All without ever touching the game engine or having to waith for any functionality to be scripted.
​When building the game it was descovered that having a circular world, while being a very cool flavor to the game, introduced many technical issues. Camera follow, physics, and many other systems had to be redone to work, which consumed a lot of the production time. How a "cool" idea can add a lot of extra technical work is something I will bring with me in future projects.

Designing Level 2

When designing Level2 I decided to devide the circular world into sections and make every puzzle self contained within a specific section. (image showing division)

​I wanted it to be clear when you solved one puzzle and when you had entered the next. Thus I made every end of a puzzle feel definitive, and made it impossible to go back after completion. Make them think "that is done, now focus on this". (image showing no return)

I always started with deciding the end goal and theme for the puzzles. "This is the puzzle where you have to find a way over some deadly thorns", or "this is the puzzle where you have to find a way to bring this rock boulder with you thorugh the puzzle". This to make the puzzles more understandable, and easier to design. (gif as example)

When being done with the first iteration of a level I always feel that it's the best level ever made... Until I playtest and the tester goes left instead of right. Playtesting for me is the most important step in level design, and this project wasn't any different. "Make this platform look more jumpable so the  player understands what to do", "make it more obvious you cant jump up on this edge so the player dont spend 15 minutes trying", etc.