DevLog - Josh Rooney

When I first heard the theme of this project which was “Borders”, I immediately thought of a prison. After discussing with my team members, we came up with a two-player co-op puzzle game, where two players have to work together to solve puzzles to escape the prison. I would describe it as a similar idea to Sakon’s Hideout from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask or the entirety of A Way Out. We were trying to think up different ideas for puzzles for a while. Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out any ideas for engaging puzzles and how to insert them into Unity, so we shifted gears and tried something else.  (pic 1)

My team member had an idea about a prisoner vs cop game, where the prisoner is stuck in a prison with a cop chasing them. I expanded on the idea, introducing the aspect of going for a highest score. Together, we branched out the idea into a maze-like prison, with multiple cameras so the player wouldn’t be able to see the entire prison at once, giving the AI controlled cop a chance to sneak up on them and surprise them. Every second, the player’s score goes up by one. The goal of the game is to get as high of a score as possible.  (pic 2)

After mapping it out on paper, we whiteboxed an area map in Unity to walk around in just to see if it felt too big, or too small. When building the map, we wanted to make sure that players felt trapped in this environment, but we didn’t want them to feel claustrophobic. So, we had to find a balance between granting the player a feeling of being trapped in this prison, but still having hope that they can escape the looming threat of the enemy cop. It felt pretty good, so we added colour to the map and characters, and then we added the cop’s AI.  (pic 3)

<span class="NormalTextRun SCXW66592125 BCX8" <the="" ai="" <="" span="">The AI basically just follows the player, but we added a NavMesh Surface to make sure that the cop wouldn’t phase through walls. Once that was added, we playtested <span class="NormalTextRun SCXW66592125 BCX8" <the="" game="" to="" make="" sure="" everything="" worked="" properly,="" and="" that="" it="" <="" span="">the game to make sure everything worked properly, and that it w</span>asn’t too one-sided. We did have to tweak the AI because the cop would often overshoot the target, and couldn’t catch up easily, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out in the end. (pic 4)</span>

Next, we had to do the start and end screens. These weren’t too bad to implement, the hardest part was probably lining up the text so that it fit nicely into the panel. I am happy with the way they turned out. After some polishing up, including adding a water texture to the outside of the prison to show that it was on an island, similar to Alcatraz. Also, we added sound effects and music to enhance the player experience. (pics 5 & 6)

We decided on the name “Prison Run” and, after conducting one final playtest, built the game and uploaded it to itch.io. I am super happy with how the game turned out and am proud of what we accomplished.