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Pair-adise

ROLE

Lead Game Designer, Gameplay Designer, Game Balancer, and UI Artist

DESCRIPTION

Pair-adise was my Game Design and Development 100 team and I's Jackbox game pitch project. Pair-adise is a drawing based party game build to be in a Jackbox party pack. Pair-adise is about a laid back Tiki God waking up and causing a volcano to erupt on a small island where the Tiki's (players) live. The Tiki God says he will save the Tiki that has the highest favor (Points). Since Tiki's don't have much time and are fairly simple they draw on whatever they can find and only can complete half of a drawing. Tiki's must pair up and combine drawings to present to the Tiki God to gain Favor. The winning Tiki pair gets a special Boon for winning the round that can help them later on. After 3 rounds of drawing and pair building the Tiki God will select the Tiki He will save as the island gets destroyed.

YEAR

2021

GENRE

Drawing Based Social Party Game

PLATFORM

PC on Steam

Game Design

MAU was made to be a puzzle platformer with a total of 9 levels with no loading screens

MAU was made to be a puzzle platformer with a total of 9 levels with no loading screens

Concept to Final Product

Challenges

The concept of MAU was pitched by my classmate and team leader Sarah Ziebarth at our classes pitch session when picking games to develop. It started as puzzle based mummy cat game with the idea of collecting its body parts as you progress. 

I at the time was pitching my game called Soul-Lo where you played as a frail spirit possessing enemies to use them to do puzzles and fight/platform through levels. A lot of my ideas of player interaction and the health mechanics of MAU came from early concepts of Soul-Lo. Both games had similarities which allowed me to work extremely well in the team and fine tune the gameplay and heart of the game.




 

The game from pitch had very little direction at first. Puzzles and platformers have all been done before and they are fairly broad. I took the idea of collecting body parts and ran with the idea of collecting the 9 lives of the dead cat as you go through the game. This allowed for players to self scale and by making the core idea around health the level design could really excel at making the game feel fun yet difficult where the player picks their difficulty. 

Scope and Development Time

Challenges

MAU is a puzzle platformer with a total of 9 core rooms with many interconnecting hallways. The scope of the game was ambitious from the start due to wanting unique puzzles and mechanics in an exploration heavy game. However, it all was completed and presented at the Stout Game Expo in Spring 2022.

 

The time we had to make MAU was less than 5 months. We also only had a team of 3 artists and 2 coders to make the game a reality. Given that I pushed for a more modular design model due to my previous experience making Minecraft resource packs. 

I took up many art and design roles since our team was so small. I designed Gameplay, Levels, Tiles, Environments, Water, Fire, Foliage, Interactables, Ground Clutter, UI, Custom Font, and Menus.