Step by Step
Team: Group of 5
Role: Programmer, Animator
Timeline: 1 Week
DESCRIPTION
Step by Step is an alternate controller platformer game where two players wear an aluminum pad on their shoe, and must coordinate their steps to navigate an obstacle course. The game was created by myself and four others in a week-long design challenge run by our Game Design program. It was an opportunity for us to work with people from different years, and experiment with non-traditional controllers.
TOOLS
- Unity
- Makey Makey Board
- Visual Studio/C#
JUMP TO SECTION
PROJECT SHOWCASE
ALTERNATE CONTROLLER
COOPERATION
Fun and unique challenges can be created when two players must coordinate to complete a simple task, so our team decided to build on this idea.
By making players alternate steps to move their character, it forces them to creatively communicate their actions akin to a “three-legged race”. The addition of rotating platforms also adds an element of time pressure, requiring communication to be efficient.
In the attached video you can see us testing an early prototype of the controller to move the character. Notice the level of coordination needed between the two players to move around.
ALTERNATE CONTROLLER TAKE AWAYS
Working with an alternate controller showed that how the player interacts with a game can define the entire experience. Through not only our game but many others developed by different student groups, I tried games that could not exist without their custom-tailored controller. It made me realize how many creative game ideas are possible through the use of non-standard controllers.
PROGRAMMING
CHARACTER CONTROLLER
Knowing that coordinating with another player would add its own difficulty to the game, I made the character controller as intuitive as possible to use.
Since most players wouldn’t be used to using a stepping-pad as a controller, I added animations to signal when the player’s foot was lifted and set down. This would assure the player that their inputs were registered.
I also angled the camera so that the shoes only occupied a small portion of the screen, allowing for as much visibility as possible.
PROGRAMMING TAKE AWAYS
Designing this character controller brought its own challenges, as players did not always use it as I expected. Rather than resting their foot on the pad, some players kept their foot suspended above the pad, only tapping when they need to take a step. More playtesting could have caught this discrepancy earlier, however if I were to go back I would add more signifiers showing that resting the foot on the pad is okay.