Ahoy, Me Hearties!

Available for download on my itch.io page.

  • Developer(s): A small university team (3 members)
  • Role: Narrative, gameplay, and level designer
  • Engine: Unity3D (using Photon plug-in)
  • Programming Tools: MS Visual Studio (C#)
  • Platform(s): PC (Windows)
  • Development Time: 2 months
  • Release: May 2021 (the year of my master’s degree at Kingston University)
  • Genre(s): Adventure, role-playing, cooperative
  • Mode(s): Multiplayer
Synopsis

Ahoy, Me Hearties! is a cooperative multiplayer adventure game made in Unity using Photon’s cloud hosting service. The game story follows the British crew on a galleon called HMS Observance in the mid-18th century. Because their ship has been significantly damaged, up to four players need to join forces and keep it afloat by completing specific tasks until they reach their final destination.

The module’s brief was to develop a multiplayer game. As a result, this project had two essential design pillars – making unique and compelling gameplay with a high replayability prospect, and creating an entertaining and light-hearted atmosphere filled with a humorous narrative, fit to serve as a friendly and interactive environment for the audience.

Gameplay
  • Controls:
    • Join the same server to play together
    • Use WASD movement to move around the galleon
    • Use the mouse to rotate the first-person camera
    • Use “Space” key to jump, “E” key to pick up objects, “Q” key to drop them, and “F” key to fix holes on the ship and destroy iceboxes
  • Rules:
    • Two factors influence the ship’s condition – weight endurance and water overflow (displayed by their matching UI health bars)
    • If even one health bar reaches zero, the game session is over, and the players have lost
    • When the timer (set in meters) reaches zero, and the health bars are both above zero value, the game session is over, and the players have won
    • Picking up the fallen objects and dropping them off the ship increases the weight endurance health bar
    • The players need to pick up a carrot, destroy the icebox with it, collect the ice cream, and then fix the water leaks below the deck to increase the water overflow health bar
Learning Outcomes
  • Working in a team as a game designer with two game programmers
  • Communicating daily and keeping up with updates
    • Using various work management tools to organize tasks among team members
    • Maintaining continuous work discipline and professionalism
  • Designing and implementing various design techniques appropriate for the multiplayer genre (defining level design, counterplay, and balancing goals)
  • Making necessary design compromises during the implementation stage
  • Writing documentation for the entire production process
    • Defining design pillars, unique selling point, and high-level concept
    • Creating game pitches for multiple production stages
    • Maintaining a production blog from the initial game idea to the polished project