Take to the skies of space-age suburbia!
The year is 2064, and strange things are afoot in the city of the future! After the mass theft of the popular “Ready-Bot” home assistants, janitor turned hero, Hydrobot, must get them back! Hydrobot must use his water firing prowess to fly through this charming retro-future world and rescue his friends from the villainous Scrappers Guild before it is too late!
Role:
Game Director
Duration:
11/2022 - Current
Collaborators:
Ima Quelle - Animator & Character Designer
Michael Gardner - Character Designer
Tools:
Unity, C#, Procreate, Figma
Nathan Villasenor - Character Designer
Lily Chaitavatputtiporn - Prop Designer
Ryan Williams - Composer
Owen Goodwin - Background Artist
Game Design
Making a splash with a fun idea! Design Process and Itteration.
Initial Prototype
Humble Beginnings
Hydrobot: Happy Helper Robot all started with an idea, what if you could fly around using weapon recoil? Inspired by Super Mario Sunshine and Wario Ware: Get It Together I began experimenting with the idea of the player shooting water to locomote through 2D space. The potential was captivating, and opened doors to many humorous gameplay opportunities.
The idea came together quickly as I brainstormed what the player's experience could look like. I wanted the player to control movement and aiming TOGETHER as they completed tasks. The goal was to give the player a chaotic character that forces the player to think on their feet. The initial prototype was heavily based on arcade games like Asteroids, and was created during my first semester at ArtCenter College of Design.
Time for an Upgrade
The initial prototype for Hydrobot held a special place to me. It was my first successful project in my game design education, and I found myself returning to the project frequently for showcases and department playtests. As the semesters passed, I had gained a plethora of feedback on the project. Slowly a longing to return to the project formed, and over the summer of 2024 I rebuilt the project with the goal of aligning the project more with my initial inspiration and implementing playtest results.
I began by creating a game design document to formalize the project and work through my gameplay ideas before jumping into Unity. This document acted as a test bed for new design ideas, and experiments with where to take the concept. Once I had formalized my thoughts, I jumped into unity and began working on a new prototype.
Design Documentation
Second Prototype
Using the skills I had honed at both ArtCenter and Wolf Games, I approached the project with a newfound competency. My focus was squarely on the moment-to-moment experience, building compelling challenges around the intentionally clunky controls. I took inspiration from the 2D Platformer genre and began adjusting the game into a more linear, navigation focused style.
Building a Better Hydrobot
Development did not end at the prototype, I had a plan and I was not going to stop. After that second protype was done I continued building an experience players would be excited to see! I created new systems, objectives, and enemies. The project grew and evolved with each playtest, and it was only a matter of time before I started collaborating with artists to make something truly special.
Now, players can take to the skies as our goofy hero Hydrobot. Clashing with enemies, rescuing "Ready-Bots", and avoiding danger... all to the best of their abilities.
Level Design
Building the world of Hydrobot. Block by block.
Designing on the Grid
Hydrobot: Happy Helper Robot posed a unique challenge from a level design perspective. The game is all about flight and aiming, and the challenges presented to the player needed to account for that. It took months of trial and error to settle on the retro game inspired environments seen in the final game.
In classic games like Mega Man, or Super Mario Bros. 3, environments are build like Lego sets using tiles and I was drawn to the idea for Hydrobot. The system was perfect for building the large, vertically focused environments needed to fulfill the player fantasy of flight.
Designing "On the Grid" become a core principle of Hydrobot's level design. It simplified aiming, streamlined the creation of objects and enemies, and even introduced fun artistic opportunities.
Tools of the Tileset
With the retro gaming inspirations, I began exploring how to execute the idea of building the world of Hydrobot out of tiles. In my youth I was a massive fan of the game Super Mario Maker for its ease of use and fast iterations. I had so many ideas of building a tile-based levels toolset but was intimidated by the scope. However, I was encouraged by a peer at Wolf Games, Wing Cho, to explore the potential of this system in full.
It took time to learn to use unity's tilemap systems for the project, but after a short time I learned how to spawn tiny blocks of collision based on drawings on an in-engine grid. From there this system quickly took shape, with enemies and objects being placeable on the grid too.
By the time I was done, I had the perfect tool to build the world of Hydrobot. Iterations were a breeze; with a good toolset I was able to rapidly experiment with level concepts and playtest ideas with friends and eventually team members!
Objects and Objectives
In Hydrobot, players are presented with one of a variety of objectives each level. From surviving for a certain amount of time, to rescuing NPCs called "Ready-Bots". The goal was to always be presenting the player with new ideas or remixes of old ones.
It was important to find variety while staying in this unique objective based style. Taking another queue from the Super Mario Series I began experimenting with a variety of strange enemies and objects based around the player character's moveset.
By the time I was done, I had the perfect tool to build the world of Hydrobot. Iterations were a breeze; with a good toolset I was able to rapidly experiment with level concepts and playtest ideas with friends and eventually team members!
4-Step Level Design
To emulate the feel of retro games, we used a 4-Step level structure like the one used by Nintendo. Each level in Hydrobot is split into four scenarios:
-
Introduction: Introduce the main idea, mechanic, obstacle, or enemy that the level will be focused on.
-
Development: Expand on its use and challenge the player’s understanding.
-
Twist: Complicate the player’s knowledge, revisiting existing/known elements paired with the focus mechanic.
-
Conclusion: Provide a final test of skill and mastery, resolving the level’s objectives.
This system helped make the level design more consistent and fair feeling to players. When we conducted playtests with levels created with this structure, we saw significantly higher levels of satisfaction among playtesters.
Narrative Design
Entering the world of Hydrobot
Tales of Tomorrow
While working on Hydrobot: Happy Helper Robot, we placed gameplay first before we thought of a narrative. It was important to me that the game was fun and exciting first before we told a story, but as time went on ideas for a narrative began to form.
Hydrobot was a strange character to write a story and create a world for, especially one that felt as unique as the gameplay concept. Fortunately, I have had a lifelong obsession with retro futurism and vintage sci-fi. The idea of placing Hydrobot in a world similar to media like Fantastic Four: First Steps, Mega Man, or The Jetsons quickly took shape.
Hydrobot: Happy Helper Robot evolved into a story about the naive Hydrobot and his eccentric creator Professor Avalon setting off on a quest across a Retro Futuristic version of California to rescue their kidnapped friends, the Ready-Bots, from the clutches of the villainous Scrappers Guild... However, as the two explore they discover a greater conspiracy is afoot and they are at the center of!
Hello! I'm Professor Avalon, one of the NPCs from the game! Thought I'd jump in and share some information in this segment!
The Hard Part: Planning
Shortly after the updated prototype was made, I began planning the narrative of Hydrobot. I quickly began ideating for the plot, and I fleshed out the world and characters of the game. The story was really coming together but I struggled visualizing how it would hook into gameplay. Fortunately, with the advice of ArtCenter Instructor, Ross Berger, I decided to develop a Narrative Vision Document. This document detailed all of the gameplay systems that would support the narrative and formalize the player's experience with it.
This document (shown to the right) allowed me to explore the implementation of the story in the game and allowed me to finalize and flesh out the following systems:
NPC Dialogue:
-Players would encounter two kinds of dialogue, rapid mid-gameplay dialogue and more detailed 1 on 1 dialogue for moments of importance.
Collectables & Descriptions
-Players can collect objects called "Data Disks" within levels. These objects will unlock hidden collectibles when a certain percentage is retrieved.
Dialogue UI Mock-Ups
Getting in the Game
With the planning done, it was time to get these systems in-game... but how? There was so much content to implement, it did not seem possible to fill it all in! Diving into these unexplored waters I began by developing a spreadsheet to track all written content I planned to place in game.
In this spreadsheet, all needed data is shown. Including:
- The Asset ID used in Unity
- The Type of Dialogue
- Character Name & Spoken Line
and so much more!
Yikes that's a LOT of code! Fortunately, this system makes the importing of more dialogue data clean and simple! The level designer has the agency to place triggers wherever needed in the level.
All of this so I can talk Hydrobot's ear off!
Next I began coding this system into unity. I smartly started by making a dialogue script that would store the dialogue data as scriptable objects that can be displayed when a trigger is activated. In these scriptable objects include all of the data written in the spreadsheet in addition to character Icons and individual display settings.
In the end, the narrative scripting was complete and Professor Avalon could yap to her heart's content. Characters like Avalon can talk directly to Hydrobot (the player) as they fly through the fictional town of Paseo Heights.
