A CAT'S TALE
MY ROLE
Project lead, programmer, and game designer.
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Worked as the project's lead and primary programmer
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Worked on the game's overarching logic by scripting systems and manipulating pre-made assets.
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Built design tools and custom editor scripts that streamlined processes for the rest of the design team.
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Served as a level designer, working on content design and implementation across the entire project.
TEAM SIZE
Three developers. One programmer, one artist, and one generalist.
DESCRIPTION
Take on the role of Whiskers the magical cat and play through her story - literally! Travel through a children's storybook using the words and images as platforms, meeting fantastical friends along the way, and solving increasingly challenging puzzles using Whiskers' magical abilities. Transform into a watering can cat, toaster cat and witch's hat cat to manipulate the book's elements and progress to the next page.
YEAR & PROJECT LENGTH
2024 - ~6 months
GENRE
Platformer
PLATFORM
Engine
Unity
DEVELOPING DESIGN TOOLS
DESIGN CONCEPT
A Cat's Tale was born from the question, "What would happen if we made a platformer that takes place inside a book?"
After developing an initial prototype, we began experimenting with platforming mechanics and ideas, settling on using the words and images inside the book as different types of platforms. This culminated in the idea of players traversing through the double-page spreads of the book, from left to right, turning the page when they reach the right-hand edge and progressing through the book.
Finally, after struggling with building levels whilst keeping to standard book page formats, I proposed adding a "page solving" element. Players would progress through a "jumbled up" page, with words and images in the incorrect places, and then "solve" the page before moving on, returning words and images to their correct positions. This allowed us to be more creative with level designs and removed the constraint of making each level design look like a real book page.
KEY DESIGN CHALLENGES
The concept behind A Cat's Tale posed several key design challenges. The most notable challenge was establishing a motivation for the player. Whilst platforming inside a book was an immediately understandable concept, we needed a reason for why players were platforming inside a book, and why they should seek to progress further through the book.
We also found level design and implementation a major theoretical and technical challenge within the project. If each double-page spread of the book was a singular platforming puzzle and the words/images within the pages served as platforms, then each level design had to consider:
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The number of words/images on the page
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The size of these words/images
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A visual indicator that the words were platforms
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The starting position of the words/images
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The "solved" position of the words/images
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Any unique effects of the words/images (bounciness, movable etc.)
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Tying each word/platform into the overarching book and page solving system
This multitude of variables would make both level design and level implementation very complex and long-winded.
ADDRESSING THESE CHALLENGES AND DEVELOPING DESIGN TOOLS
The issue of player motivation was primarily solved through playtesting. In early prototypes (as seen on the right), we built the game around a non-fiction book, with blocks of text that meant nothing and solely served as platforms. Playtesters found this confusing, as they would read the text expecting it to mean something and assist them in their puzzle. Additionally, the large blocks of text were off-putting, and many felt it was a task to read it all.
In response to this, we shifted the design from a non-fiction book to children's storybook. This direction change solved several issues:
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Children's books feature fewer words per page, reducing the text on the screen and simplifying level design challenges.
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With fewer words on the screen, we can build a meaningful story focused on the player's character, culminating in the idea of "playing through your story" and providing meaning to the words on the screen.
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This narrative could serve as the core motivation of the game, guiding players to traverse through the book and progress to find out what happens in the story.
Finally, to address the technical challenges with level design, I developed multiple small tools and custom editor scripts to simplify processes for the rest of the design team (visible in the video on the right). This included:
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A tool for automating the setup of new pages, that would: instantiate a prefab, create a render texture, create a material, assign the render texture to the material, assign the render texture to the correct camera, and tie the new page into the overarching system of scriptable objects for the page solving
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A tool for skipping to specific pages in-game and testing levels quickly. Visible through an in-game shortcut, helping designers test pages quickly without playing through the rest of the game.
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A tool for setting up words and resizing particle systems to outline the words correctly. Including changing TMP text values to the name of the object and resizing the scale of particle systems to perfectly outline the text mesh.
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A proportional positioning tool to place pages/game objects equidistant from one another.
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alongside other small tools.
These tools massively streamlined the process for setting up levels, allowing us to focus more time on designing enjoyable and challenging experiences, and less time on actual implementation of these ideas.
Showcase of Project Design Tools
A Cat's Tale - Early Non-Fiction Prototype vs Final Version
A Cat's Tale - Full Playthrough