Made by Kellie Knight, Kevin Vylet, and Quin Rogers
Concept:
Endless Skier is an alternate controller game where you use physical "ski-shoes" to control the movement of your skiing avatar. Shift your weight from left to right to avoid logs, trees, rocks, and snowmen that are dropped by your player 2 competitor!
~~****~~
Rules, Goals, Mechanics
Endless Skier is a take on traditional endless runner games, but with a physical component involved: players have to shift their weight left and right on physical "ski-shoes" in order to control the horizontal movement of the character on the screen. The ski shoes have piezo sensors that detect the weight of the player, and respond accordingly. We also added a second player who is able to use keyboard controls to spawn snowmen at the top of the screen, adding a competitive element.
~~****~~
Creation Process
We initially wanted to create a game where you step back and forth, and the faster your steps are, the faster the character runs in a horizontal direction. We created our shoes, which consisted of two pairs of flip flops with small piezo sensors "sandwiched" between each shoe. Through testing, we realized that the Piezo sensors were less finicky when leaning left and right, rather than continuous stepping. This is when we decided to make it a skier instead of a runner.
We then switched from horizontal movement to vertical movement, which gave a point of view that feels more immersive to the player standing in front of the screen. We also made pixel graphics that fit the theme of our game. During our second round of testing, the piezo sensors were still a bit unreliable, and one of them broke. We opted to switch to bigger piezo sensors, and soldered on longer wires to reduce risk of disconnecting/stepping on wires.
During the last iteration we managed to add a two-player two component which allows a second player to spawn snowmen and try to make the skier lose. We initially wanted to create a separate controller, but due to time constraints we stuck to just keyboard input. It worked out very well.
Everyone who played our game gave positive feedback and had a lot of fun. The controls were very intuitive and people got a hang of them really easily. We may have to adjust the speed because it was a little difficult, but it didn't detract too much from the experience. All in all, I think the game turned out to be a success.
~~****~~
Trailer
No comments:
Post a Comment