Gameplay Designer
A Virtual Reality multiplayer free for all! Bake muffins to throw at your friends.
Purchase Muffin Fight here!
After the first few months of working at Red Iron Labs, I was assigned to work on a VR Multiplayer game with two new collegues. We were tasked with taking a prior internal game jam concept and running with it to create a prototype. They were impressed with our work and gave us the go ahead to finish the project. :)
I ran the brainstorm design sessions and developed a detailed design document - with light hearted sketches to help make the document more entertaining to read while still illustrating each mechanic’s functionality.
As we had a small team, there were many aspects of the game that we all worked on in tandem. However we each had a key parts of Muffin Fight that were ours to own. The Key parts I developed were the…
Vacuum
Pull trigger to activate vacuum triggers
Any Ingredient that collides with the vacuum triggers will start moving towards the barrel of the vacuum
as soon as one ingredient is collected, the vacuum trigers deactivate - dropping any other ingredients
Letting go of the trigger will drop the collected ingredient, making the vacuum ready for use again
Avatar Setup
As with most VR games, the head and the hands are easy to track through the headset and controllers. However the most difficult part to setup was the torso.
With a combination of tracking the position of the head and some rotation constraints, I found a way to manuever the body in a quirky manner that suited the game.
Game Show Feel
As Muffin Fight’s assets borrow heavy into game show aesthetics, I wanted to make sure the gameplay matched the chaotic energy of gameshows. Big Scoreboards, Countdown timers, Frantic Big Band music, Audience Ambiance, cartoony visual effects, and top it off with a suspensful victory reveal.
Social Space Update
As we updated the game throughout the years, the biggest addition we brought in to the game was the social space, A lobby where players could interact with each other before the start of a game - Which I got to design the layout.
As players were fairly distant from each other in matches, I wanted to provide a place where players were able to interact with each other more.
This space would also provide players a chance to practice theirs skills, or learn the game prior to starting a match.
Initially I designed it to be similar to a cafe, players could come in, socialize, cook muffins, and then take the back stage access to chose a game mode to play.
However, during playtesting I noticed that the only area really being utilized was the kitchen.
I decided to redesign the space so the kitchen is more centralized. This made it more easily accessible for everyone to participate.
