Game Designer on a Junior-year game at DigiPen / 11-person team / single player and multiplayer / C++ / DOWNLOAD HERE

Rikko is a 3d competitive FPS multiplayer game for up to 4 players involving shooting, collecting powerups and gathering points.

Co-designed gameplay systems. My goal with this project was to get people to experience competitive combat in a more intimate setting than ever before. Instead of having a large 3d environment for players to run around in, I took a cue from classic games, and used the inside of a cube for our playing field. Each player started on a cube plane and could move freely along their plane, but could never leave it. With this in mind, I suggested that we branch the gameplay into two pathways – player vs. player and point gathering. Groups of targets would randomly spawn inside the cube, and the players would be given points for shooting them. On top of that, players could directly hit each other for bonuses.

Co-designed player powerup mechanics. Because the player arena was so intimate, and gameplay rounds lasted quickly, with players able to easily see where each of them are, we decided to go with close and personal powerups that would give immediate bonuses to players such as faster movement speed (positive bonus) or slow shoot rate (negative effect) opposed to passive ones over time.

Assembled a mix of music and sounds. After putting in regular sounds into the game, I realized that with players firing bullets so rapidly in close vicinity, and with so many other things happening at once, the soundscape was going to be a terrible cacophony. A few brainstorming sessions later, me and the team decided to use this to our advantage and try to make all the sounds create a pleasant melody. However, instead of a whimsical melody, the sounds would all be rough, similar to someone banging together a bunch of everyday objects. I got the idea from walking around downtown Seattle, and observing homeless people using everyday objects like garbage cans and sticks to make music. The general musical beat track in the game was accompanied by players shooting, scoring, and movement noises. It was my task to pick out all these sounds from a huge library, and edit them in Audacity to make sure they played well with each other.