Ratatime
**Disclaimer: due to the loss of the drafts I had previously, in addition to the art being privated by the artist, I am unable to showcase any more than simple videos of gameplay. I apologize for the inconvenience.
About: This was a project I was working on during the “Gamedev.js Jam.” For this, we had 13 days to make a game all around the theme of “Time.”
It was a really interesting project to work on, as it was definitely the first game that I’ve made that shifts between two scenes frequently!
It was a truly delightful time working on this project, as I got to work alongside our artist and help introduce her into the wonderful world of game jams!
On this project, I gained experience with leadership as I assisted our artist with understanding everything our group would need from her and to better understand the time constraint of the game jam.
What I’m most proud of with this project, aside from it receiving 1st place in the open source category, was how I essentially made completely unique areas using a somewhat limited tileset.
We didn’t have any major pieces to designate individual areas, save for the large clocktower at the end, so I had to improvise a bit and be creative with what I had on hand.
Project Breakdown:
- Genre: 2D Platformer, Strategy
- Engine: Unity
- Team Size: 5
- Duration: 13 days
- Platform: PC
Between Two Worlds:
While playing this game, players will be constantly shifting between two timelines. In one, it’s a beautiful utopia populated with many civilized rat denizens with beautiful and bright architecture. In another, it’s an apocalyptic dystopia where the once civilized and peaceful rats have all devolved and become massive, feral beasts.
When it came to designing the level layout for this game, I had a bit of a challenge. I’ve made games with multiple levels before, but this was the first time that I was making a game where the levels continuously swap between each other. It also meant that, in regards to level design, I had 2x the work to do.
For the sake of simplicity, since we only had roughly two weeks to work on this, I decided that there’d just be one long level rather than multiple levels doing the exact same thing. To simplify the process even more, I also decided that the two scenes that the level would swap between would have the same layout but different assets to distinguish themselves from each other.
I first started out making a few simple drafts, then I developed the white box, and then I got to building up the level and adjusting the design to suit my needs during routine playtesting and experimentations with the design. It was definitely an interesting experience testing out both the scenes during gameplay when they’re constantly swapping back and forth.
Of The Essence:
Time is a very big theme for this game, as it’s not just present in the overall narrative of the game but also in regards to the gameplay. Players must reach the end of the level before time runs out, and to get to the end in time players must also barter for additional time from the friendly rat denizens in the utopia segments. To trade for time, players must collect cheese throughout the level to barter for more seconds added to the clock.
With “time” being the theme that our group had to incorporate, we had to more than just simply have our game be on a timer. That’s just too easy and we had a lot of talent at our disposal to really stretch our creative imaginations. And so, we developed the scene-swap mechanic and then soon after we came up with this gem of a feature!
When testing out this feature, we went through various different ideas for how long we wanted the timer to start at to give players enough time to finish. It couldn’t be long enough to where players could just blow through the entire game without making a single trade, but it couldn’t be difficult enough to the point where it relied on sheer luck from the trades to beat. A solid middle ground had to be achieved for this.
In the end, we established a more than reasonable and forgiving timer that also provided players enough of a challenge without the game feeling like it was holding the player’s hand the entire time. Though it took a bit of time and testing to get there, the results were definitely to everyone’s liking for those that played the game on release!
Timely Deals:
Not every rat gives the same deal, as they’re all completely randomized! Some offer fair deals, some offer great deals, and some offer absolutely terrible deals! Part of the strategic gameplay here is picking which moments you want to trade for time and which rats in particular. Even if you find the right rat, you only have so much time before you’re thrust back into the apocalyptic dystopia and that once friendly business rat is now trying to attack you!
For the deals themselves to feel like they had impact, it was decided that each rat would have a randomized deal that they would offer to players. Some could be good, others not so much. The reasoning behind this is that we wanted to encourage players to collect as much of the cheese as possible while playing and then be strategic with how they spent it. A player who is smart with their deals will get by a lot farther in the game than someone who just cashes in at the first chance they get.
When designing the rat placement, I wanted them to be evenly spaced out and cautious of their placement with regards to ledges and pitfalls. The rats themselves were coded to not be able to walk off the ledge but they could still be baited into jumping off ledges to their death. We thought about adjusting that feature but we came to the conclusion that leaving it in only adds another layer of strategy to the game!
With regards to placement as well, it was also important not to overly populate a small environment with too many rats. However, later on towards the game we decided on the notion of having one large area dedicated to having a lot of rats for both trade opportunities and dangerous chases. Players could either choose to dawdle and browse through the different options at their disposal, or quickly leave the area before things got too dangerous.