My Role - Lead Designer and Gameplay Designer

• Distributed tasks and managed the production schedule for the game for myself and my co-designer for this game jam project.

• Designed and implemented all 3 minigames that the player performs while trying to manage the nuclear power plant.

• Conceptualised the game's ideas and mechanics with the co-designer based on the theme "Automation Hell".

• Implemented a difficulty scaling system similar to my other project, Lucky Shot, and rebalanced it to fit this game's requirements.

Key Features -

• Fun and engaging minigames that are quick to pick up but can be mastered to reach greater high-scores.

• Engaging theme song and sound design for buzzers/puzzle elements and the nuclear meltdown end screen to keep every run fresh.

• Audio cues indicating when the puzzles are available and also indicating a correct vs incorrect attempt at resolving issues to the player.

Design Highlights -

• Each minigame/issue contributes to the nuclear meltdown bar while it's active until resolved by the player.

• The nuclear meltdown bar goes down if no issues are currently active, encouraging the players to resolve them as quickly as possible to keep the run going.

• Each minigame affects the same meter instead of having individual fail states to avoid confusing the player too much and also letting them compensate for a lack of skill in one minigame by being good in another.

Learning Outcomes -

• Balancing scope and ambition with moment-to-moment gameplay fun. It was difficult to let go of some interesting ideas that did not make for a fun moment-to-moment gameplay experience.

• Learning how to manage a production schedule with 2 people under such a tight deadline. I was constantly re-evaluating mine and my co-designer's task lists based on our different speeds and making sure that no one person gets too burdened or too free.

• Balancing difficulty curves, the game's initial difficulty was too hard and was balanced and re-balanced many times during playtesting to create to most enjoyable and least frustrating experience for the player.