Project Overview
Pathos is a fixed perspective puzzle-adventure game published on Android and iOS mobile platforms by All 4 Games. The game won two awards at the prestigious Dare to be Digital competition in 2015 which gave myself and my team the funding to finish the project and get it published.
Based around the foster care system, Pathos re-creates the story of a person who was once a foster child through aesthetics, game play and narrative. The journey follows the main character, Pan, through events in her life and the challenges along the way.
Featuring an unusual mechanic, the player can flip their mobile device to change perspective of the world they're in and help Pan overcome the obstacles in her way. Originally intended for the Playstation Vita, the flip mechanic also doubled as a way to find other perspectives of handheld consoles to offer developers extra out-of-the-box creative freedom.
Dare to be Digital 2015
Pathos was entered into the Dare to be Digital finals after passing the interview stage (July 2015). In 7 weeks myself and my team developed our concept into the demo showcased at the Dare Protoplay event in Dundee, Scotland.
After 4 days of showcasing our demo, an awards ceremony was held for all 16 teams in the competition. Pathos came out with both monetary awards - the Channel 4 award and the Design In Action award for Commercial Potential.
After the competition, Pathos was featured in issue #285 of EDGE magazine with other participants. The game has also been discussed in an interview with The Guardian and a number of foster care communities in the UK and US.
Platform:
Android, iOS
Engine:
Unity 5
Scripting Language:
C#
Pipeline:
Unity 5, Visual Studio 2015, Photoshop CC
Project Completed:
Hand-Off: March 2017
Published: June 2017
Team Size:
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1 Designer/Programmer
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2 Artists
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1 External 2D Artist
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1 External Audio Designer
Personal Role:
Gameplay/Mechanic Design, Level Design, UI Design, Asset Integration, Scripting/Programming, Project Management, Business Management
Vita To Mobile
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Originally built for Playstation Vita, the project was moved to mobile.
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Without analogue controls, benchmarked hardware or the handheld market, the entire concept needed to shift to meet mobile standards.
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On screen controls were switched with pathfinding and intuitive mechanics.
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All aspects of the new concept focused on quick and simple characteristics.
(Pre-mobile screenshots can be seen below)
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Teaching The Player
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A lot of the early development went into researching ways to tutor players about playing games.
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We wanted to let the player discover the game themselves without being spoon-fed information.
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My personal dissertation was done on puzzles in video games and my research was focused on tutorials and methods of implicit teaching.
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Puzzle structures became the tutorial that taught the player throughout the game - only the flip mechanic was explicit due to its uncommon nature.
Flip Mechanic
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The mechanic that drives gameplay and also narrative.
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Flipping the world changes perspective for both Pan and the player.
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What is normal for Pan is turned to fantasy - what the player thinks something does is changed into something else.
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Obstacles then become tools to progress.
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Flipping the device was originally designed for the Vita's analogue controls - the layout worked for both right-way-up and upside-down.
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At the Dare event players were surprised and interested by flipping the mobile device - that proved the mechanic still worked for touchscreen devices.
Puzzle Design
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Mechanics were designed to be drag and drop for quick puzzle development that offered a lot of variation.
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Puzzle design then became the creation of logic paths - the pieces needed structure to offer players a challenge.
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A system was developed between myself and the environment artist to communicate the structure of puzzles (seen below).
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This system was similar to electrical circuitry I had seen in my old Engineering classes.
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Scripting/Programming
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Lack of programmer meant I had to cover that area as well as design.
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Had experience through developing the Dare prototype without a programmer.
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Taught myself with each hurdle along the way.
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Created my own custom pathfinding system that works in a 3D grid space.
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By the end of the project I became proficient with both C# and Unity.
Business Management
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As part of our agreement with All 4 Games we had to form a limited company - 'FixedUpdate Ltd.'
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It was also my job to start and keep the business running throughout development:
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Finances
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Taxes
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HMRC/Companies House
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After publishing, the company then becomes a platform for royalties.
