AWE - Fruity Fractions (prototype)
What I've worked on:
What I've worked on:
•Managed dev/design
•3D assets for airplane conversion
•3D assets for airplane conversion
Fruity
Fractions is a prototype for the type of one-off, low-overhead games we
might have made as a supplement to a curriculum. It was originally
designed in absence of the airplane aesthetic (that changed later on - see below).
The learning goal on this game was to visually conceptualize the notion of fractions (i.e. the relationships of smaller pieces of a whole). We originally planned to make the fractions come in to play as the crafting component of an adventure game, but that increased the scope of the project far beyond the "lightness" we were going for.
The reason, though, for using crafting as the starting place was because of the very real relationship fractions have with recipes, and so we simply moved that core from potions to pies. We felt that, to make a crafting game work, we had to have some mechanic for resource acquisition. To keep the game light and flexible, we looked at mobile-type games to see which genres might best fit the bill, and we decided on "match-three" (for both its ease of use and the capability to easily transfer the concept of "gathering resources" into it).
The final version of the prototype was a match-three game that added fruit eliminated from the board into a "basket," from which the player could discard items at-will. The player was given a target recipe (the notepad shown above) and tasked with completing a certain number of recipes given a time constraint.
Interestingly, despite the initial goal of separating this thematically from airplanes, this was looked at as a potential addition to the AIR project. To showcase it for that, I worked with some others on "reskinning" this to fit the aircraft carrier theme, and I was able to create the 3D models that would replace the fruit with airplanes (instead of a basket/cupboard, they would be in a hangar waiting to go on deck). This was a learning experience for me, as I had the opportunity to create several models on a fairly tight polygon budget (<400tris).
The learning goal on this game was to visually conceptualize the notion of fractions (i.e. the relationships of smaller pieces of a whole). We originally planned to make the fractions come in to play as the crafting component of an adventure game, but that increased the scope of the project far beyond the "lightness" we were going for.
The reason, though, for using crafting as the starting place was because of the very real relationship fractions have with recipes, and so we simply moved that core from potions to pies. We felt that, to make a crafting game work, we had to have some mechanic for resource acquisition. To keep the game light and flexible, we looked at mobile-type games to see which genres might best fit the bill, and we decided on "match-three" (for both its ease of use and the capability to easily transfer the concept of "gathering resources" into it).
The final version of the prototype was a match-three game that added fruit eliminated from the board into a "basket," from which the player could discard items at-will. The player was given a target recipe (the notepad shown above) and tasked with completing a certain number of recipes given a time constraint.
Interestingly, despite the initial goal of separating this thematically from airplanes, this was looked at as a potential addition to the AIR project. To showcase it for that, I worked with some others on "reskinning" this to fit the aircraft carrier theme, and I was able to create the 3D models that would replace the fruit with airplanes (instead of a basket/cupboard, they would be in a hangar waiting to go on deck). This was a learning experience for me, as I had the opportunity to create several models on a fairly tight polygon budget (<400tris).