Night of the Songbirds
Unity First-Person Non-Euclidean Exploration
Ubisoft Game Lab Competition | Team: 8
Date: 2/5/24 - 4/19/24
Role: Systems & Mechanic Designer
and SCRUM Master
My Role
I was the systems and mechanics designer and Scrum Master on this project. During this development process, I helped create some of the fundamentals of this game, designed and programmed all of the accessibility features, and made documentation for my team.
Portals
One of the main things of our game is the Non-Euclidean portals. We wanted them to feel seamless when players walked through them. Some players couldn't notice the change, that's how smooth they are.
Carry-Over
Our carry-over mechanic is similar to hide-n-seek. One session of players are hiding pieces in the environment and the next session of players are looking for those pieces. The environment also changes once the players accomplish their goal.
The Goal
The goal of the players is to either find or hide pieces of the sun within the environment. They must work together in order to locate and grab pieces. Once the pieces are placed in their spots, the player can watch the world change as they win the game.
My Process
This project was used in the 2024 Ubisoft Game Lab Competition. We were given about ten weeks to work on this project. The theme was Dream and we were given a series of mandates to follow. Some of the mandates included networking, AI, a carry-over mechanic, a running out of mechanic, and some others. As a systems and mechanics designer, this was a fun challenge to create a game and I learned a lot in the process.
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Systems and mechanics wasn't my only task. I was also the team lead which involved communicating with Ubisoft on a weekly basis so we could talk to our mentors. One other job I had was being the Scrum Master and managing my team through this project. I lead meetings, groomed the backlog, and made sure that we had good Agile practices that worked for our team. The designer and programmer side of me worked on all of the UI and functionality. This includes the main menu, pause menu with the accessibility features, and credits scene.
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We faced some difficulties along the way. Networking was an uphill battle and the other mandates provided a unique challenge as well. For instance, the carry-over had to be something that was brought over from a previous session. So if a player did something in one session, it would have to have an affect in the next one. Even with these struggles, I was able to provide my team with some creative and unique solutions to our project that ended up in the final build.
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In my opinion, I think this project turned out amazing and it showed me how creative you can be with even the hardest restraints. My team and I worked hard on this project, and I think it shows. We were nominated for best technical with our Non-Euclidean portals. My Agile and Scrum practices were also improved during this project.
