Summary
Type: Game / Major Release
Acquirable: Xbox One and itch.io
My Role: Solo Project (UX, Level Design, Programming, QA)
Time Frame: 2 Months Part-Time
What Is Evicted?
Evicted is a game released on Xbox one and Itch.io, it's development time was approximately 4 weeks of full-time work. Moments after you move into your new home, you're evicted from the property and have a short amount of time to grab what you can and throw it back outside.
Aspects Of Note
During the development of Evicted, I'm proud of quite a few things;
- Console Release: This is the first time I had released a project on a console, specifically Xbox One. I had never released on a major storefront before this and working with the Windows Store and releasing on Xbox One is something I know most game developers can't say they have done.
- Player Retention: The idea of keeping player retention through artificial awards interested me. I implemented it with a game streak where each time the time limit is reached, the player can play again and receive character and score bonuses until the game streak is broken.
- Grey boxing: Although it should always be a part of the development pipeline when developing levels for mass-release products, I'm still proud of what I accomplished. Although some areas didn't change dramatically in terms of level design, the different art passes were a night a day difference during development.
(Top) Early greybox (Bottom) Final pass
Level Design Layout
The blue square represents the 'score bin'. Further from the scoring bin, the higher the points, meaning item placement needed to be planned out. The green circle represents small points, black is medium and orange is a large number of points.
The point of positioning the score bin in the centre of the house is that it's a central position that people are meant to visit often.
Level Layout - First Pass
The zoning colour coding is all the same. This time the score bin is on the outside of the house as playtests showed that people didn't thematically understand why quickly leaving a house means putting items inside it.
Playtests also showed people only taking the same path to the house. To resolve this, the house is now opened up in the back and multiple pathways as the highest scoring zone is far further now but now players have different paths to take.
Level Layout - Second Pass
What I've Learnt
As I had mentioned before, I learnt about releasing on console - specifically on Xbox One. I'm happy that I could optimise Evicted to run at a stable frame rate on the base Xbox One model. I also am familiar with implementing the storefront material for the game - dashboard icon, store icon, splash screen, store page descriptions, etc.
