A 2D Endless Runner
Background
UpWord is a 2D word-building platformer in which the player ascends infinitely, bouncing on letter tiles to gain height and create words. Score as many points as you can within the time limit, submitting words to gain more time.
The idea behind this game was to create mash together Doodle Jump and Scrabble and create a mobile game experience by adding power-ups and using each platform as a letter.
My Role
I worked as an engineer on this team in a team of 12 students. I was responsible for prototyping and implementing different game mechanics needed for the game.
Tools
Unity, C#, Github
Timeline
2 months, released on itch.io at the end Summer 2022
Development Process
I started working on UpWord in the Summer semester at USC, with the goal of releasing the game at the end of the Summer of 2022. Our goal was to mash together 2 easy mechanics in well-known games. We picked Doodle Jump and Scrabble because these were games everyone understood the best. With that, we started looking into how to collect letters while also playing endless runner. After prototyping different types of jumps in an endless and creating a system for spawning random letters we found a decent direction to walk while developing the game.
We balanced our game by providing the player hints on what easy words they can make and gave the option to make words of up to 8 letters to increase the reward for the risk taken by the player.
Elements of my work
We created a spawning manager which would constantly spawn and destroy platforms. We prioritize platforms with letters that are part of the suggested word lists and specify the min and max distance between a new platform and the most recent platform spawned.
Spawning Platform System
Submit System
We used the walls around the player to submit/reset the word that is currently collected by the player. For visual clarity, we switch the color to show what function a wall would do with the current list of letters selected.
Special Platforms
To have more engaging types of platforms and easier ways to form words, we implemented 3 different special platforms. Each platform helps the player to create words and makes the game easier. Using a special platform also provides more points which can make it easier to beat high scores.
Overcoming Challenges
Data Driven Development
This project required a tremendous amount of balancing. We had to find the right amount of letters to spawn for the player to collect and also check if players were motivated enough to create long words. We tracked this data by sending data gathered through events in-game to a google spreadsheet and analyzed 100 playtest data. We gained this data by first creating mock-up predictions of what we should get and comparing them to the actual data gathered.
Shop System to buy power Ups
We also tasked ourselves to create a shop system by using the player’s score to create an in-game currency that can be used to buy different types of power-ups. This way we were able to create different ways to beat the high score and add a loop that the player can have an engaging experience with.
