Project summary

• Designing a smaller webgame to be published on CrazyGames.

• Working together with a Game Developer, learning from him.

• Refactoring project to use State Machine.

• Developing in Unity with C#.

• Developed a workflow fully using Miro.

• Created one page designs and a core game loop schematic.

• Used EventHandler events and other methods of decoupling my code.

• Used Unity assets for art, SFX and game-feel (e.g. DoTween, Feel), improving the game while lessening scope.

• Iterated on UI & UX designs.

After working on my online RPG prototype graduation project Yaikomon, I decided that I needed to pivot more towards smaller monetizable games. To sustain my future indie game development career, and to showcase my game design and development skills on my portfolio.

I was influenced on this decision by the studio BiteMe Games that make great YouTube videos about running a small game studio, and who recently has had success with a small game, Unicycle Pizza Time, on which they only spent a couple months. 

Through them I also found CrazyGames.com. Typical games on this site require relatively short development cycles and are promoted to an audience of thousands if you manage to get your game qualified and uploaded. They offer all this in return for part of the ad revenue your game creates, but not in return for the rights to your game, which you keep. I really liked what they offer in terms of publishing and that they even offered a nice Unity SDK, so I decided to develop a web game for their site.

After experimenting with tools like Trello and Notion for a while I eventually came online upon an indie developer using the Miro mind map feature for breaking down project tasks. I came to really like this approach for (solo) game development, since you can add a broad task and then break it down into smaller tasks as much as you need. With this method I always felt I knew what exact task to do next.

And then ofcourse I could use all other Miro features in one place, so right next to it I had:

• One page drawing for my concept

• Drawn gameloop for core mechanics

• Deadline planning

• Weekly broad task planning

• Drawn out other mechanics, UI layouts, marketing research, etc.

The core idea behind Twisty Keys of being a sort of Twister, but on the keyboard, came out of an older prototype made during my studies at HKU. What changed in this version is being based around enemy attacks where it's timed when you have to press the right keys. This adds a speed challenge and a bit of a narrative to it. I chose this concept for it's short development time and uniqueness.

What went well so far:

• Programming went smoothly, got great practice with the concept of decoupling

  • Implementing state pattern for the main game loop

  • Using EventHandler events to separate concerns

  • Mainly implementing the MVVM design pattern

  • Not shying away from using of Singletons, keeping in mind the KISS principle

  • Separating logic into tons of scripts generally

• Found a passionate teammate who has contributed a lot

• Assets like DoTween and Feel were easy to use and add a lot to game feel

• Miro workflow works great for small team development oversight over the project

• Playtested with friends and family for valuable feedback

What were challenges so far:

• Not all keyboards can handle lots of keys simultaneously

  • Hardware limiting player experience

  • Implementing a system that hard-limits playable keys to match key rollover

• Using post-processing is less performant for intended web-game hardware

• UI design moved through lots of passes, things often looked cluttered

• Playtesters often found mechanics lacked impact or clarity

  • More emphasis had to be put on the battle aspect (bullets, skeleton animations)

I am really happy with my prototype so far after 6 months. All mods are finally implemented and lots of them had positive reactions during playtests. UI and UX is also working well as players are not getting stuck quickly and are finding out what to do even when the tutorial is not yet implemented. Some mods aren't yet well understood though like the Fade mod and 2x Switch One. We are also not using post processing anymore and have done a lot of other performance optimizations like implementing object pooling and using an Update manager.

This build also includes my solution to the key-rollover issue with the game described above. Players with keyboards that can hold less then a certain amount of max keys (2-6) can spam-tap a total of 8 times each key they cannot hold.

With the core gameplay done we are moving towards adding a tutorial and meta-game mechanics like diamonds (currency), unlocking mods, unlocking speed levels, different bosses with different hp bars to defeat, and charging and firing bullets to defeat bosses and progress.