Explosive Express final-vers.2
Genre: meta-narrative, puzzle (and action)
Team Size:7
Duration: 2 months
Explosive Express final-ver.2 is an action puzzle game about the chaotic process of game development. Join the playtesting, board an old, fancy train and defuse a bomb before it’s too late. However, while you’re playing the game developers might make adjustments to the game…
Genre: meta-narrative, puzzle/action
Team Size: 7
Duration: 2 months
Explosive Express final-ver.2 is a short action/puzzle game about the chaotic process of game development. Join the playtesting, board an old, fancy train and defuse a bomb before it’s too late. However, while you’re playing the game developers might make adjustments to the game…
June-Juli 2025
My responsibilities
- Outlining mechanics, design rules and narrative concept in close collaboration with other Designers
- Designing and iterating on gameplay situations / puzzles
- Outlining narrative sequence of gameplay situations in collaboration with another Designer
- Specifying which assets are needed and communicating it to the artists
- Working in Miro and Google docs
- 2D layout
- 3D blockout
- Gameplay relevant set-dressing
- Setting up gameplay relevant systems in engine
- Using custom tools provided by programmers
- Defining scale of train space and major objects together with artists
- Preparing and conducting playtestings
- Evaluating results
- Communicating problems or necessary changes to the relevant team member
- Designing signs and feedback
- QA
- Outlining mechanics, design rules and narrative concept in close collaboration with other Designers
- Designing and iterating on gameplay situations / puzzles
- Outlining narrative sequence of gameplay situations in collaboration with another Designer
- Specifying story beats and communication to dialogue writer
- Specifying which assets are needed and communicating it to the artists
- Working in Miro and Google docs
- 2D layout
- 3D blockout
- Gameplay relevant set-dressing
- Setting up gameplay relevant systems in engine
- Using custom tools provided by programmers
- Defining scale of train space and major objects together with artists
- Preparing and conducting playtestings
- Evaluating results
- Communicating problems or necessary changes to the relevant team member
- Designing signs and feedback
- QA
Narrative & Core
The players are playtesters of the game “Explosive Express” watched by the developers. Always if the players do not pay attention – if they physically blink – the developers make changes to the game.
The player can listen to the devs talking and bickering who do not realise that they can be heard.
The 4 -10min gameplay contains switching to the greybox, genre-breaking action sequences and a (fake) system crash.
Blinking mechanic
Technical:
Via the regular webcam of the PC or laptop, the face and eyes of the player are tracked (locally on device). In the beginning, players are asked to turn on their webcam and to calibrate the eye tracking.
Gameplay:
The fictional developer make changes to the game when the player blinks, thus not paying attention.
Simplified gameplay example:
The developers quickly want to check out the level greybox. The next time the players blink, the train environment will transform into its greyboxed form. Realising that the player can now see the greyboxed train and – even worse – the solution to their puzzle, they quickly change the environment back with the next blink.
Tweaking & faking physics
The main goal was to create an impactful, thus strong, charge effect on the one hand. On the other hand, it should not feel annoying to move together, being constantly influenced by each other.
These two seemingly conflicting goals required a lot of iterations, testing and as well as faking the real life physics.
The player’s gravity, mass, max Speed values and animation curves of attraction and repulsion needed all to be harmonised. Since the effect of the magnetic force depends on the distance between both players and their current movement, the process got very complicated.
Puzzle and action elements
To create more variety in gameplay challenges, the charge mechanics is used with regard to objects to create puzzle and action challenges, such as charged platforms or elevators (movable by attraction and repulsion) or dangerous charged antimatter, which the player needs to dodge (and reacts dependent of the player’s charge).
Level Design
- 2D layout with focus on composition
- 3D blockout + building the train with custom tools created by programmers
- Gameplay relevant set-dressing
- Setting up gameplay relevant systems in engine
- Defining scale of train space and major objects together with artists
Some insights of my work:
5. Texturing & global lighting
UX Design
- preparing and conducting playtestings
- evaluating results & (re)designing
- communicating problems or necessary changes to the relevant team member
- designing signs and feedback
- QA
Some of my UX (re)designs
- decreased difficulty by adjusting time limit
- increased readability (size of objects, visual contrast, placements of puzzle clues)
- signs and feedback for bomb defusion (buttons, bombs, interactions)
- more intuitive shooting: reload and shoot buffering
- higher clarity for speed change of crossbow targets
- placement and tweaked speed of crossbow targets for lower difficulty
- blink feedback in specific levels and in general
- sound feedback
- blocked paths to avoid unintended backtracking
- lower speed of intro sequence for higher accessibility
- added audio feedback for blinking calibration
- …