App City Dash

Team: Cyber Safety Project

Role: Game Designer, Game Developer

Timeline: 5 Months

DESCRIPTION

App City Dash is an educational infinite-runner game designed to teach children Cyber Safety principles. The game is designed for use within a classroom, allowing teachers to quiz students and export their results within the game. I designed and developed the game as a solo contractor for Cyber Safety Project, an Australian company that creates and delivers cyber safety content and curriculum for classrooms.

TOOLS

Unity
C#
Blender
Microsoft Office Suite

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PROJECT SHOWCASE

TESTIMONIAL

Joel was an exceptional partner in bringing our game vision to life. He not only interpreted our brief with clarity, but also contributed his own creative ideas and deep knowledge of game design to deliver a product that exceeded our expectations. Highly professional and accountable, Joel worked collaboratively and flexibly with our team to create an outstanding educational experience for our students.

Trent Ray, Co-Founder and Lead Educator at Cyber Safety Project

GAME DESIGN

DESIGNING FOR CLASSROOM USE

I designed the user path to be as simple as possible so teachers would be able to effortlessly guide their students through games during lessons.

Confirmation pop-ups were added to remind students to export their game results, preventing possible misinputs by eager players.

BOOSTING REPLAYABILITY

Repetition helps reinforce learning, so unlockable cosmetics were added to incentivise recurring play.

To buy every item in the shop, students will have to play several games before they earn enough energy.

This repetition means they’ll be quizzed on the same topics multiple times, making it easier for the student to absorb the game’s curriculum.

ACCOMMODATING ALL
SKILL LEVELS

All students have different abilities and skill levels, so multiple options were added to ensure everyone is accommodated.

The game supports tablet or computer controls depending on what the student is comfortable with, or what’s available in the classroom at the time.

Elements like question answer time and player speed can also be adjusted to fit anyone’s needs.

GAME DEVELOPMENT

A diagram I created while pitching the game which outlines the core gameplay.

A snippet of pseudocode and in-game code I created for the object pooling and spawning system.

The character model I designed. It was designed to be efficient to create, cheap to render, and easy to apply customization options to.

The shader I designed for Blip. I added parameters for primary and secondary colours as well as face textures, allowing for runtime customization.

The game's sound system I designed. Music tracks were split by instrument to allow for dynamic variations of music during different parts of gameplay.

BEING FLEXIBLE IN MULTIPLE ROLES

I worked as a solo game designer and developer contractor on App City Dash, meaning I was frequently hopping between different roles. To efficiently manage this, I personally developed the key assets and systems for the game, while sourcing less important assets from elsewhere.

Blip and their collectibles were custom made, but background building pieces were sourced from asset packs. This gave me more time to fine-tune the programming and systems of the game itself.

MATCHING BRAND THEMES

It was important that App City Dash blended neatly with Cyber Safety Project’s existing content and brand.

The game went through multiple iterative styles to find one that best brought the existing brand into the medium of videogames.

ADAPTING TO NEW CURRICULUM

Partway through development, App City Dash was updated to include four areas of curriculum, rather than just one.

I pivoted the game design to best support this change, while efficiently reusing systems. The Responsibility Chip, an unlockable that had four tiers, was split into four standalone chips, with each chip tied to a piece of curriculum.

This gave each subject a meaningful unlockable while not introducing complexity.

PROJECT PLANNING

WORKING ACROSS TIME ZONES

I developed App City Dash while working with Cyber Safety Project, based in Melbourne Australia.

Through careful planning and well-timed meetings, I was able to effectively work alongside their team in a fully-online format.

A schedule I designed and used during development to track hours and progress.

A showcase of slides from different update deliverables I created throughout development.

SCHEDULING AND CREATING MILESTONES

To ensure that the final project met the needs of Cyber Safety Project, I created milestone deliverables throughout development that made it easy to receive feedback on my work.

I blocked out my work with estimated completion times for each task throughout development.

This made it easy to see my progress on the project and calculate how much extra time I could allot for additional updates and pivots.