The running game -done!

Hello everyone! A while ago I did a post  on my gamedesign for Neeva’s running game and...

Hello everyone!

A while ago I did a post  on my gamedesign for Neeva’s running game .   After that post, I've send the gamedesign over to my programmer - and yesterday he send me again the final working version of the game. So, that’s another part of Neeva’s story done!

Flipping the gameplay upside down

Now during the making of the game, we actually had quite a few discussions about it. And one of the things we discussed, was to how to best simulate the feeling that you are running on a treadmill.

Now my initial idea was to have the shoes permanently in the air; and have them come down after you clicked your mouse, to hit the passing footsteps. So I was going for a whack-a-mole style game. But when I played this version of the game it felt very unnatural. I guess shoes aren’t supposed to stay in the air :)

Then my programmer proposed to switch it around. Meaning the shoes would be permanently on the belt- and when you click your mouse, the shoe would now jump up. Now this was a big improvement, and actually gave you the feeling you were running.

Great!

However…there was a downside too. Because by changing ‘stepping down’ into ‘jumping’, the ‘whack-a-mole’ gameplay got lost. So all the connected gameplay elements had to be turned around from a whack-a-mole setup into a hop-step-jump setup. Now, that was a bit of extra work- but in the end all made much more sense ;)

And now this is how the game plays:

The art

Now while my programmer was coding the game, I still had to refine the remaining art for the game (the Neeva you see above is a placeholder).

Now during the game Neeva will cheer you on, and she will get more excited as you get further in the game. So I had to make several new poses for that - and additionally I also had to make poses for when you miss a step, win the game, or win the game with a perfect score.

So I made six new poses in total. And here I’ve put the poses in a sequence, so you can see how they change.

And below you can see the sketches for these poses. I tried a few different things before this- but soon discovered that I had to keep the changes between poses very small, or else the poses would distract too much from the gameplay.

Well, and that’s another mini-game done. I hope you like it :)

Have a nice weekend & all the best!
-Robin