Narrative Designs
Here are some of my narrative design related works.
Finders Keepers
(2023)
ROLE:
Game Designer
DESCRIPTION:
Finders Keepers is a casual simulation game where the player uses a metal detector to search for treasure on the beach. The player must listen to the beeps of the metal detector to determine how close they are to a new item.
As the player finds more items, they can donate those items to a museum to complete their collection. They can also sell the items for coins to upgrade their metal detector to find better items.
Solo Project
TOOLS USED:
Unity, C#, Photoshop
USER EXPERIENCE GOAL
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Discovery - Players discovering something new each time they dig in the ground, whether it be an artifact, gem, or garbage
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Excitement - When players find a rare item, they feel excited that they have collected it
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Progression - Players a sense of progression as they find more and more items to put in the museum
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Satisfaction - Seeing the museum filled out completely, players feel accomplished that they've come so far.
SYSTEMS DIAGRAM
DOCUMENTATION
CODE DETAILS
Metal Detector
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Separate states
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State switches based on distance to artifact
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Different audio clips play based on metal detector state, making beeps become more and more frequent
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Looks for all nearby artifacts, and sorts them by distance. Then picks the nearest one as the “target” to tell the player if they are close or not. This is constantly running in update.
Museum + Items
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ItemData scriptable object has a donated Bool. When the player donates the item, it is ticked True.
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Each artifact has a set location in the museum, when the player donates the item, the sprite will be instantiated at the museum location.
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Other details include the item’s name, its rarity, icon, price
Item Spawning
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There are a list of spawning locations in the map.
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The item to spawn will randomly pick between all the different locations and spawn near that area.
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The item that is attempting to spawn must check if the player’s metal detector is high enough level to find it.
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Due to items being different rarities, this is to limit the player so that they can only find common items at first
Upgrade
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The shop is a place where players can sell duplicates of the artifacts they find as well as upgrade their metal detector using coins.
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In the code, once player buys an upgrade, the amount of coins needed to reach the next upgrade is the current price + double the amount of the current price.
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This creates a difficulty ramp as players must farm more coins to reach the next level.
Selling
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To sell items at the store, several checks are made. First, players must determine how much they want to sell and what they are selling.
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The code checks what is in the player’s active slot and multiplies the value of the object and how much the player is selling.
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Additionally, the slot will update itself automatically, where if the player sells out all the items in their active slot, that item will disappear.
LEARNINGS FROM PROJECT
For this project I've learned how to tune various elements in my game so that it gives players proper feedback on the status of their actions. For example, I created an indicator that pops up when the player is able to dig, so the player understands how the metal detector sounds like when they are right on top of an object. I also learned the importance of how UI elements should look, as in a previous rendition of the game, the drop button was an X, which confused players thinking that it was used to close the inventory. I switched to a trashcan icon to make its functionality clear to the player.
