Formula Frosty
Game Design Level Design
Details
Genre: Racing, Top-Down, Couch-Party
Duration: May 2019 - June 2019
My Roles: Game Designer, Level Designer
Team Size: 12
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Platform: PC
Genre: Racing, Top-Down, Couch-Party
Duration: May 2019 - June 2019
My Roles: Game Designer, Level Designer
Team Size: 12
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Platform: PC
Description
Formula Frosty is an arcade top-down racing game, where players try to eliminate their opponents by getting them off the screen. Formula Frosty was my 1st year team project, our goal was to deliver a vertical slice of a game in 8 weeks.
The core of the game lies in the combination of slippery car physics and always keeping the players in the middle of the action. This is achieved mainly by the respawn mechanic (respawning the player back into the race without stopping its flow) but also by allowing the player to shoot snowballs and affect players ahead.
My Contributions
Car Physics Balancing
Game Design
- The main balancing challenges were recreating the feeling of drifting hover-crafts and balancing it with the limited overview of the track ahead the player has due to the camera angle
- Throughout development I playtested with players with varying racing experience, testing multiple control schemes and finding the simplest one that still allows a lot of expression in drifting
- My general approach included getting to understand how each individual variable impacts the gameplay and balancing the physics together with the track
Track Design
Level Design
- With a modular set of track pieces, I intially created 3 track designs to test, with varying combinations of corners
- Based on the best pieces of each track, I put together the final track, putting the easier corners in the beginning, creating a specific tension curve
- I also added buffers for most of the corners, allowing me to control the difficulty of each corner, which was necessary to offset the lack of overview for upcoming corners
Game Mode Concept
Game Design
- For our game, we needed to find a game mode that promotes elimination, but also is quick to prototype
- I decided to do my research in local 1v1 games so we can avoid having to develop networking or AI opponents
- The most promising proposal was single-screen elimination, similar to Micromachines, combined with the lives/respawn system of Super Smash Bros
- The result was direct player feedback for eliminating enemies, multiple lives that allow the player another chance at beating the opponent and no breaks in the action thanks to smooth respawn