- Role: Game Designer and Level Designer
- Platform: PC and Mac
- Development tool: Unity
-Development time: 48 hours
CellMission is a puzzle game designed as part of the 2018 Global Game Jam. The theme for 2018 was "Transmission." We decided to think about transmission in terms of human biology and the transmission of viruses, antibodies, and other cellular structures. The story of the game is that you are a red blood cell accumulating and collecting white blood cells to fight an infection, that is represented by holes in each stage. The player's objective is to attach the blood cells to form the correct shape and then flip them into the hole to seal it off and cure the infection. For my part, I helped come up with the initial design of the game and was responsible for designing each level of the game.
Design Process
Since this game was made for the Global Game Jam, and we only had 48 hours to design and develop the game, we had to move quickly and efficiently. After we figured out the concept for the game, I immediately began drawing out level designs:
We playtested each of the stages as paper prototypes before creating them in Unity. We didn't want to waste time making stages that were impossible or too easy in Unity, so we budgeted a small amount of time in the early morning on Saturday for playtesting and iteration. We didn't want to waste time redrawing levels out under such a time crunch, so we made changes directly too the initial designs. While this would not be ideal for traditional game development, we found this method to be rather effective for rapid design and iteration for the GGC.
Our initial plan was to have tutorials before each new stage to introduce new mechanics, but they had to be cut for scope, though we were able to adapt a few of them into stages of their own. We went into the process designing for a complete game experience, but realized that the 48 hour period of a game jam is not enough time for that, and that you should focus on a core mechanic and run with it. That's what we did, and we were able to complete the demo version of the game that we sought to create. The 2018 Global Game Jam was my first one, and I definitely learned a lot about designing and working under pressure as well as how to appropriately scope given time and other parameters such as team size and individual expertise and skill. Overall, I am pleased with the game that we made, and feel that approaches the theme of transmission in an interesting way.