rePAIR:

rePAIR is a co-operative puzzle game, it was made in a 48 hour period during the 2020 Global game jam, alongside the initial game jam, the game was shown at the the Living arts centre in Mississauga Ontario. while working on this game I helped with the initial Idea idealization, but I primarily was working on character Design and modelling.

the Game:

rePAIR started as a prompt for the 2020 Global game jam event, the prompt itself was just “repair“ from there the ideas started to flow, things like a home renovation game, a car garage, or even a spaceship where considered, the one thing we wanted however was co-op, from the very beginning that was a major mechanic we wanted.

The second major factor when deciding on how the game was structured comes from what we wanted the player to be competing against, it had to be quick, it had be easily understood. and it had to be simple to program. so we went with the easiest opponent out there, time! it kept our game short, it was simple to program and it was conceptually easy to understand, with that out of the way we got down to game play. Again we wanted simple and easy to understand, at this point we had already decided on toy creation, but we didn’t know if the player was controlling the large man in the background, or the tools themselves, after about a hour of deliberation we chose the tools themselves as the players.

HAMMER:

The hammer was a simple design, its only function is to smack stuff and as such I felt that a “cute“ face would be endearing for the players, like the rest of the game the main concern was simplicity, overall it was extremely simple to model, UV wrap and integrate.

SCREWDRIVER:

the screwdriver was simple, but went through multiple small re-designs, initially the screw driver was much like how it ended up in the actual game, we tinkered with the idea of a more “Avian“ pose and while everyone (Including me) was extremity in favour of the design, our animator was indisposed and we could not get the new idea into the game.

PAINTBRUSH:

while my personal favourite design in the game, we found it way to complicated to actually implement in the game in 48 hours, all the assets were made including tutorial images but the functions to allow players to switch between tools ended up being to complicated, so we just relegated each of the two implemented tools to permanent positions as player 1 and player 2.

Reflection:

I learned a major amount about the unity animation graph and team dynamics, honestly the main reason this game was even complete had to be because of our resident team manager and QA tester Vanessa, she gave us insight into player feelings and how we can make things fun without even needing to make mechanics, things like physics objects and environment details. I am extremely happy with how much 3D modelling I was able to do, while I am a level designer at heart, I’m extremely glad that all I had to do was model in such a simple game like this.