PROJECT DETAILS
STUDIO
Tomato Cake Inc.
DURATION
April 2024 - Present
ROLE
Level Designer
INTRO
Robotopia is a first-person 3D adventure game featuring a core mechanic where players speak with robot characters. I joined Tomato Cake Inc. as a Level Designer to create dialogue-driven gameplay sequences, puzzles, and original characters focused on that unique mechanic.
EARLY ACCESS ALPHA:
MY RESPONSIBILITIES
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Prototyped levels, character interactions, and gameplay mechanics
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Created dialogue-driven puzzles and gameplay sequences in a game where players can say anything to any character
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Created original characters, story scenarios, and gameplay sequences
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Prototyped the Inspect mechanic based on consistent player feedback asking for more usable information outside of conversations, reusing the conversation system's code and UI to make information delivery a player choice
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Collaborated with artists, programmers, and sound designers on UX improvements, feature requests, and gameplay improvements
THE INSPECT MECHANIC
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The Inspect Mechanic was added to the game to provide players an additional way of collecting information in the world outside of robot dialogue.
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When aiming at an Inspectable object, a blue glow will highlight the object, with a UI prompt to "Inspect," and when players click on it, a text box appears that provides information about the object that the player can "inspect."
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In a game about dialogue and conversation, the words players understand and the information they know about how Robotopia works is especially important because those words and phrases are the direct toolset that they're using to progress through the game.
Problem: The Inspect Mechanic was added to solve a couple design problems in the game regarding information delivery and player attention.
Feedback from players was consistently showing us two seemingly conflicting details: the number one complaint from playtesters was that they didn't know what the game was expecting of them and felt like they had to guess what they needed to do too often. "I don't know what my goal is" has been a persistent comment made during playtests.
However, playtesting every version of Robotopia has shown us definitively that players really don't like it when the game explains things to them when they're not asking for it.
Players not wanting to listen to the NPC dialogue is a reality of game development, but this is especially challenging in a game about conversation and dialogue. This is the most consistent action players take, but they don't want us to use it to communicate their goals or provide instructions while they're using it.
On the surface, these seem like two conflicting pieces of feedback coming from two different types of players: one of them is craving more information, the other one loathes when we give them more information. However, I had a realization while trying to solve this problem:
The Realization: These aren't conflicting pieces of feedback creating two problems we need to solve interpedently of each other! These are two adjacent and interdependent pieces of feedback that were communicating a single problem:
Players want the game to communicate their goals and direction more consistently, but they want it to be their choice.
Solution: Using the same UX from our Conversation Targeting System, I prototyped the Inspect Mechanic, a simple interact mechanic that displays a header and brief description text of an object players click on in the world, both creating gameplay consistency between our systems and leaving necessary information about gameplay, goals, lore, and even hidden quests scattered around the world.
The key part of this solution is that it gives us the ability to communicate what players need to navigate the game, but instead of nesting it in introductory conversations filled with exposition that we force players to listen to, it now becomes an interactive object that players engage with at their discretion. The most important aspect of this is that it makes delivering information the player's choice.
LOADING DOCK - LEVEL GALLERY
BEAN ME UP CAFE - LEVEL GALLERY
