Trail Mix

2019

Roles

While my primary role was project manager, I helped out with other aspects including, level design, UI/UX and coding.

Made Using...

Overview

Trail Mix was made over the course of my final year of Sheridan College's Game Design program. Utilizing our team's strong 2D art background and a love for oddball game concepts, my team wanted to create something unique. We followed a design process that had us diverging, converging and critiquing ideas until we reached a general consensus and came up with the game that Trail Mix is today. We showcased Trail Mix to a wide audience of players at various events such as the Oakville Public Library's Gaming Expo, Level Up 2019 and Digifest Toronto.

Painting a Grey Boxed Level

Trail Mix's Kanban Board

Made using Taiga

Rough Pause Menu Layout

Roles & Responsibilities

While I helped to organize and prioritize tasks as the game's Project Manager, I also assisted with other aspects of Trail Mix. Our team was small but we all had diverse skill sets, so we were able to hop from task-to-task depending on what needed to get done. I worked on menus, on-the-fly controller swapping, level design and making sure that players had an accessible user experience. Painting over greyboxed levels with finished art assets will always be one of my favorite things to work on. You have to be careful not to get lost in the details and it's always fun trying to interpret what the greybox will actually look like while still making it so that player's can understand the shape of the level.

"It took me two days to paint dirt tiles for just one level,

Two Days!"

Interact with images by clicking and dragging

Process of

Level Select

My design for the level select went through so many phases that I almost lost track. My goal was to make the first 3 introductory level doors easy to reach as to not waste player's time. There was a brief time where I wanted level select to be more cinematic but it just ruined the flow of things. An important addition to the level select was the inclusion of a small platforming challenge to the otherwise flat first half of the level select. This section allows players to take a break in-between levels and have fun exploring.