Drftz 4 Music

Project INFO

Level-Ups

My Design Process

Current State of the Game

This game was divided into 3 steps of production due to time restraints: 1- Straight Streets, 2- Drifts, 3- polish. I have currently completed the first stage adding most of the mechanics and structure of the game as well as feedback/signifiers. I am currently working on implementing drifts at key points of the song and will later be going through all art and signifiers for a polish pass.

Design Premise:

When I came up with this concept, I was listening to a song that talks about 3 main themes: Games, Anime (primarily Naruto), and Car Drifts. I then envisioned the premise that the artist was contacting and hiring me to build an interactive video clip as a promotional release to hype up the release of their next album. This being a promotional piece means a few things:

1. SFX should never overshadow or “muddy” the song.

   To solve this, I want to either use minimal SFXs or integrate the song’s sounds, such as their car engine sounds, as the SFXs so that they don’t feel off and don’t remove you from the experience of the song.

2. There should be no “bad” feelings when playing.

   This means in a lot of ways, no death and no way of losing. I want the player to just feel “Awesome” when playing, but the better they play, the more “Awesome” they feel. This also means little to no transitions and quick menus as I don’t want anything to remove the player from the video clip experience.

3. VFX and timing are key.

   Since I can’t rely on SFXs, I came to the realization that the “feel good” effect, must come from visual effects. But even more than that, what is most important is to nail down the relationship between the player’s actions and the song’s melody. To solve this, I made so that not only is this a rhythm game, but so that you are quasi-guaranteed to get things like speed boosts and drifts at key points of the song, such as beat drops.

4. Mobile Platform

   Since this project is supposed to be a piece of publicity to some degree, it needs to be easily accessible. Not only does the mobile platform that, but I believe the general public would be more willing to download a free and fast game on this platform. However, another advantage of this choice is due to how intuitive the controls are on a cellphone, meaning the experience will be more instinctive and require less materialization.

Tutorial:

The tutorial can’t take too long nor can it stop the experience. Therefore it needs to be integrated as part of the level and visually teach the player. With that in mind, it needs to explain 3 main things:

1. Controls

   Due to the benefits of the platform mentioned above, using arrows has been enough to communicate controls to players.

2. Close Miss dodge

   To teach this mechanic without using text or pausing the game I figured the best course of action would be to “trick” the player into performing a close miss. For that, I decided to use pick-ups that are placed at the exact position that when picked up will leave the player at Close Miss distance. And so by trying to get pick-ups and dodging, the player will learn about Close Misses.

3. Speed boosts and Invincibility

   To teach about Speed boosts and immortality I created a script that generates a “tutorial pattern” infinitely while holding off the song until the player hits a combo. Once they do, the invincibility will trigger and they are now faced with a wall of cars, with no option but go through it and see the invincibility at work.

Narrative Design / Scoring

1. Visual Design

   As this is a trap song from Brazil I wanted to incorporate visual themes that are “Hyped” within that culture. This meant a cyberpunk/low-fi look. To achieve this, I focused on bright warm lights to sell the low-fi theme coupled with emissive materials which are iconic to cyberpunk scenarios.

2. Artist integration

   I wanted the artist to be part of the game to some extent. To solve that, I used their image in key moments such as combo signifiers.

3. Theme Design / Scoring

   I wanted to add the theme of Naruto to the game since it is very prevalent in the song I was inspired on. However, since I don’t make my own art, I had to find workarounds. To solve this, I made so that icons would be a reference to the show (like the kunai pick-ups in the tutorial) and at the end of the game, I assigned a rank based on their score inspired by the ranks within the show.

4. Narrative Design

   Since I don’t make my own art, I decided that when I eventually add narrative, I want to have a couple of concept arts that tell the narrative by themselves. I would then pan the camera over said assets to display narrative progression.