Going Home
What
Top-down,
turn based tactical adventure
Team Size
10
(3 designers)
My part
Game-, Level-, Mechannics design
Engine
Unity
Duration
7 weeks
(2020)
Going Home is a top-down, turn-based tactical game, where you play as three heroic mice on their quest to find their safe haven - Mousetopia.
Download game! (.zip 128 MB)
Gameplay
We wanted to give the player an tactical experience where the player feels smaller than everything else, but still manages to progress.
The player controls three mice, each with different stats. The goal was to make the mice individually weak, but strong together, which I think we really nailed.
Onboarding
I scripted the tutorial on the first and third level.
The tutorial introduces:
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Movement
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Enemy
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Mice Teamwork
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Mice Traits
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Rules
Show script | first level tutorial
Show script | third level tutorial
Exiting a level
Before exiting a level with a wagon, the player must've pick up all the food. This code I made checks that, and tells the player how many pieces of food that's missing with an UI that I animated.
All food collected? Go!
Show script | exit level check
Level Design
Each level was pretty small, since we wanted the levels to be completed pretty quickly. This actually presented a challenge for me as the level designer, since there was limited space to work with.
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Enhance the tactical feeling
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No rushing!
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Multiple ways of completing the levels
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Keep the players on their toes
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Each level unique
I had to playtest my level blockouts over and over again, and carefully listen to feedback to find out how to make each level interesting and unique.
The scrum workflow
We used the scrum workflow for the first time when making this game. We set up a board at Miro, which we used frequently for meetings and task-assignment.
Miro board content:
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User stories
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Scrum poker
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Sprint planning
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User storyboard
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etc, etc...
We got a clear view of how much work we had ahead of us and could adapt the scope early, which in turn led to plenty of time for polish.
COVID-19 AND WORKING FROM HOME
This game was made during the corona pandemic, which forced us to work from home. None of us in the team was used to working from home and it gave us plenty of challenges, with everything from team building and brainstorming ideas, to motivation and communication.
We had to change the core way we were used to work, and I know I learned so much from this experience.
In retrospective, I think we managed to adapt well into this new situation, due to clear communication and a "virtual office" on Discord. We had no problems talking about our motivational struggles
Verdict
"Feels perfect, the combat is amazing, love the turned based gameplay!"
"Great gameplay, it felt easy to understand with some depth still. It felt very responsive and immersive as well."
"I literally only have one line of feedback for this: Please release this on Steam"
"I dont know what to say other then im super impressed. this game felt so polished and good, that you guys should seriously consider to keep on working on it ! the only "bad" thing i could think of was that i wanted more levels! [...]"
On the final week of the project, the game was judged by a jury from the industry and the other students from the school. Our game was very well received by both the jury and the students.
I think the reason we managed so well was that we communicated well and always asked for feedback. We managed to adapt our scope early, thanks to early playtesting and rapid prototyping.
And, of course, incredible team members!
