Jesper Susi

Hungry Turtles!

Responsibilities: Lead Designer, Game Design and Level Design

School Challenge project with commissioned assignment: ”An asymmetrical multiplayer PvP game​ with a thought-provoking environmental theme​”

Engine: Unity 3D

The basic gameplay is reminiscent of a game of tag with some hide and seek elements – The turtles try to fill their tummies by eating seaweed scattered across the level and avoid the diver while the lone diver player tries to vacuum the food knowing that it is actually plastic trash and trying to catch turtles to reset their food meter progress – actually trying to save them.

Level Design Breakdown

The environment of the game posed an interesting level design challenge since it took place underwater and swimming allows for near boundless vertical movement. A typical tag obstacle to run around could also now be swum (mostly) over.

The original concept took place in the bottom of the ocean with no natural boundaries for the level. I quickly decided to place the level in a shallow lagoon to provide for natural boundary “walls” and a “ceiling” in the form of the beach line and the water surface. The shape of the level basically became a bowl. I used the ProBuilder package to construct the entire level geometry.

To restrict players only moving near the top because that is where their movement would inevitably be least restricted, all the food items were placed towards the bottom and a big island was placed in the middle of the level that would compel players to basically move in a circle around the level to reach new areas instead of going in a straight line from one end to the other.

With the floor plan being a circle with a hole in the middle, it felt very natural to divide the level in to 3 soft “areas”. The division was planned together with the artists with the intention of each area having a different bigger hero asset, with each of them to provide for different interesting gameplay and especially to provide points of interest in different areas of the level along with distinct landmarks to aid the player in navigating the space.

Because of the gameplay dynamic between turtles and the diver, the most memorable moments were ones where turtles had to make risk/reward judgements on whether to go get food and the diver doing successful ambushes. To generate more of those moments, the level was populated with tunnels that would reward turtles with food but serve as risky chokepoints that also the diver could use to stage surprise attacks.

Finally, the game did not have a separate tutorial so I constructed a small warmup arena where players would start before the actual matches began. I populated the warmup areas with guiding signs teaching the controls and made a complimenting layout that would guide players to naturally interact with them.