QUT CAPSTONE - GALLERIA

Galleria is a 2D puzzle platformer adventure designed for children aged 8-11. With fun and engaging artwork, immersive puzzles and an interesting story, players are encouraged to flex their problem solving abilities and fine motor skills.

Galleria represents my first major work as a developer. Acting as the creative lead, level designer and producer, among many other smaller roles, I led a six person, multi-disciplined Agile team over a period of 12 months to complete the capstone project for the Bachelor of Interactive Entertainment & Games at QUT. You can read more about the game and the team here.

Early user testing

Designing for children presented a unique challenge, which required thorough research and the best way for us to do this was to utilise user personas and test on real kids. I worked with two young users to identify ideas, mechanics and themes with the potential to be used within the game, along with discovering pain points, especially those unique to designing for children. This pen-and-paper testing with actual users was invaluable in terms of discovering effective level design and thoroughly exploring the usability of the basic mechanics.

PRE-PRODUCTION ROLES:

• Producer

• Creative Lead

• Game & Level Design (concept, mechanics, UX and level design with focus testing)

• Basic Narrative & Character Development

PRODUCTION ROLES:

• Producer

• Creative Lead

• Playtesting Coordinator

• Audio sourcing and implementation

• Marketing

MAJOR DECISIONS - CONTROLS

Throughout the production side playtesting process, it became clear that our initial ideas for the control system needed a major overhaul. Originally, players used the left and right thumbs to move the selected character to either side of the screen. Eventually we found that it was actually difficult for children to perform this manoeuvre along with managing jumping at the right time. Although I was initially opposed to the idea, it was clear changes were needed and as a team we decided to take the risk to switch to a “soft controller” despite being quite close to our deadline. The left hand used up to 3 buttons (depending on the character selected) which handled jumping and using the character’s abilities, while the right thumb held and moved left and right as a joystick might. Thankfully, this and after some extra testing it was very clear the updated controls were better.