TheMakingofPABOsAdventure

WeiXie

Overview
PABOisaPhysicsbasedPuzzleGamedevelopedforthePC.PAisaheavyblueishballthatcan
slideonterrainsandBOisalightpinkishballthatcanflyintheair.Playerscansimplypress
spacetotransformbetweenPAandBOtocompletedifferentlevels.
IstartedthisprojectwithTenghaoWang,ZongyeYangandShengzeZhangforGlobalGame
Jam(GGJ)2015.Togetherwecreateda3levelprototypein48hoursbasedonthetheme,What
dowedonow.Recently,webuiltanewversionwith3themesand15levelsandpublisheditin
theWindowsStore.InthisessayImgoingtotalkabouttheprocessandthethingsIlearned
whichcanhelpmakethisgameamorepleasantexperience.

PABO(GGJversion)postmortem

Whatwentwell

1. Uniquemechanics

PA and BO: Our original concept was, what do we do when laws of physics
change/disappear (eg. gravity, friction,)? It sounds interesting but really hard
for people(especiallypeoplewhoarenotgoodatphysics)tounderstandandreact
to. Our biggest concern was how to translate the change of physics laws and
manipulate them in our game. Thinking from a players perspective,Isuggested
we change different avatarsinsteadofchangingthelaws sothatit'smoreintuitive
to players.Forexample,transformingfromanironballintoaballoonwouldmore
intuitive than telling the player now that the ball is no longeraffectedbygravity.
After severaldiscussionsanditerations,wesimplifiedourdesignfrom3ballsthat
can simulate 3 different physics laws to 2 balls and play with one lawofphysics
only gravity.Itturnedouttobeagreatsuccessduringourplaytests.Playerslove
thisintuitiveanduniquemechanic.

Stephen Hawking Can Play This: In the game, everything can be navigated with
one button. It's simple to understand because you only need to use the
spacebar., said one of our playtesters. Since the goal ofourgamewastomakea
pleasant puzzle gaming experience that mainly focuses on casual gamers, this
easywayofnavigationturnedouttobeverysimpleandintuitive.

2. Organizingthetime

It was wise for us that we went home and had a nice sleep after we settled the
basic mechanics and gameplay on the first night. Thanks to the previous
participants advice, we didnt approach it with the whole stayawakeaslongas
possible attitude. It was good for our health and made our Saturday incredibly
efficient. However, we didnt sleep too long for the second night. But the work
for the following day wasfocusedoniterationsandpolish.Whatsmore,thefinal
showcasethatafternoonkeptallofusawakeandexcited.

Developing by testing: Its the first time I realized how importantitistodevelop

fast and fail fast. During the process, we tried to pick which physics law(s) were
we going to manipulate. We kept asking ourselves: Whats fun about this
experience? Whats the goal? If I were a player, would I prefer A or B?
Why? Whats the cost? But its not enough to just talk on paper even though
those questions did help us narrow down the choice. Some problems wecouldn't
foresee but we figured out from rapid prototyping and testing. Thats how we
decidedtochoosegravityforourmainmechanic.
Overall, time is money, especiallyforthiskindof48hourgamejamandwedida
nicejobinbalancingourtimeandwork.

3. Teampipeline,motivation

We had very clear roles in this project and worked very efficiently with each
other. Thanks to our BVW experience, our pipeline wentverysmoothly.Weare
good friends and had a very good atmosphere during work. We were brought
closer together by our lack of Game Jam experience since we were all learning
how to do an game jam together. Wewereallconsistentlymotivatedtohave fun
anddowellonourfirstgamejamproject.

4. Personaldesignandartskills

Thiswasmyfirsttimetryingleveldesignanddoingwatercolorstyledigitalart.
Bothofthemwereverychallengingtome.ImgladIdidafinejobandI
appreciatethatpeoplelovethem.IknowIstillhavelargeshoestofillandIll
keepworkingonthat!

Whatcouldhavebeenbetter
1. Betterstory/tutorial

We had an instruction scene that ideally taught press spacebar to start. A lot of
people got the idea of usingspacebartotransform,butonlysomeofthemfigured
out they could transform multiple times (Unless they died several times or we
just told them). During our playtests, we found out that some of ourplayerstried
to succeed on the first space transform to floating and kept trying that without
thinking about transforming again. Most of the players had no idea that they
would lose if they flew outofthescreen.Forthenewversion,wemainlyfocused
onthisconfusingsituationforplayers.

2. Betterdifficultycurve

Becauseoftimelimitation,wecouldonlymake3levels.However,itdidntwork
outperfectlyasweexpected.Someplayerhadproblemswithlevel1,finished
level2inasurprisingmanner(thatdidnotusethebottomrightloopatall),and
completedlevel3onmyfirsttrybyexploitingthetransformingmechanic.
Anotherchallengewasourintentforhigherlevelstoencourageplayersnotto
pressspaceoncebuttogglebackandforthasneededtosolvethepuzzle.Onlya
fewoftheplayersfiguredthatoutinourthirdlevel.Sofixingourdifficultycurve
andmakingitclearertoouraudienceisreallyimportantforourfutureplan.

3. Betterplanningforgamejam

We had the rough schedule at the beginning, but as things went on we found it
was not practical at all and things never went as we expected so we just
abandoned it. For example, we planned to use at most two hours to brainstorm
and made a rough prototype the first night. However, we ended up with a basic
concept from atoughsessionofbrainstormingforthewholenightandwenthome
for sleep. For the following days we spent the majority of working time on
making the game logic and creating assets. No more specific schedules but a
ASAP attitude. Luckily, we got it done in time and reasonably balanced out for
both work and rest. But after all this, I found it really helpful to set asidetimeto
do some planning, instead of abandoning the plan we could simply reviseitafter
each break. By revising it consistently, it would help us keep in scope and know
when we should start iterating on game structure or bug fixing.Andabetterplan
will let us keep track of our development process sowewonteasilyforgetsome
parts.

4. Betterpreparednessforplaytests
Sunday afternoon we were exhausted and excitedtojointheshowcase. However,
none of us had ever planned for conducting the playtest or taking notes. Until I
conducted several playtests for our semester project myself, I neverrealizedhow
precious these kind of opportunities for playtesting were. Though we didareally

good job at warming up our spot by encouraging and even screaming with our
playtesters. That attracted a steady flow of players to try our game. However,
when we tried to analysis our game based on players feedback, we had to recall
all the memories about what excited them, what confused them and what
motivated them. Its not accurate or efficient at all. So wedefinitelyneedtotreat
our future playtests more carefully with better preparedness. For example, plan
ahead for documentations with questions to askandachecklist,separateroles for
notetakerstoobserveplaythroughandsurprises,etc.
5. Lessnervousness,morefun!
We understood that the right way was to make fast and fail fast, but within 48
hours we didnt dare to try and we had too manyconcerns.Themorenervouswe
got, the harder it was for us to make decisions. Thats the main reason for our
incredibly long brainstorm session. Until then, we didnt talk about failure or
losing the game but adjusted our attitude towards having fun and giving it a try.
Things went much more smoothly. With more experiences like this and better
preparation,Ibelievewecandoitbetterinthefuture.

PABOsAdventure(DesignChanges)

1. Newstory

Howdoesthesimpleststoryhelpplayersunderstandthemechanicsbetterand
motivatethem?ProfessorJessementionedaveryinterestingcaselikeCutthe
Rope.ThestoryisquitesimpleOmNomlovescandyanditsverynaturalfor
playerstohelpthatlittleguygetcandytoeat.PAandBOaretwocuteballsthat
aretooabstracttohavefoodorotherconnectionwithpeoplescommonsenses.
Wediscussedseveralstoriesaboutsavingtheotherslivesorescaping,butnone
ofthemfitourjoyfulandlightfeelingtone.Thenwestartedfromtheairywater
colorstyleandcheerfulsongandfinallywedecidedtouseadelightfultraveling
storyofPABOasourbackground.Topasseachlevel,theplayerhastohelp
PABOfillintheblankofthecanvastotakeapicture.Thisnicephotowill
improveyourmemoryofthejourneyandalsotherecordforpassingalevel.

ThereforewechangedthenameofourgamefromPABOtoPABOs
Adventure.

2. Level1Newtutorial

Based on the analysis of previous playtests, we decided to add some very gentle
levels that were easy to start with. We removed the instruction scene andinstead
we created a new level 1 as our tutorial. Personally I dont like the saying of
tutorial and one of our playtesters also suggested, Props to embedding
mechanic teaching in the first level despite having instructions. Really helps
players get a feel instead of trying to form a wrong model in their heads. What
wewantplayerstogetfromthislevelwas:
(1).Understandingtheirgoalofthegame
(2).Figuringoutthebasicmechanicslikepressspacebartotransform

3. Motivation!Sharewithyourfriends

As for how to maintain the players motivations and reinforce our difficulty
curve, we added stars for players to collect and a score system to our game. We
did research on scoring systems of some existing games and customized our
scoringsystem:
The score of "PABO's Adventure" for each level (Perfect score = 6,000
points)iscomprisedof2parts:
(1) Getting the 3 stars (1,000 points each so 3 stars will give you 3,000
points),
(2) Completing the level as fast as possible (delaying 1 second willresult
in a loss of 100 points) and if you can complete the level in less than or
"exactly" equal to 5s, you can get the maximum score for this "time"
portion which is 3,000 points. The score counting process shows a

"rounded" no. of seconds on screen but the score computation does not
roundupthetimelikethis.
4. Betterdifficultycurve

Thefirstlevel(tutorial)teachesplayersthebasicmechanicsandwedesigned
higherlevelstoteachandtrainthemstepbystep.Forexample,Level1teaches
playerstopressspacebartotransformfromBOtoPAandlevel2teachsplayers
theycantransformmultipletimes.

Thenewversionhas3themesand15levels.Generallyspeaking,thefirsttheme
isforplayerstogetusedtothemechanicsanditseasytopassthelevelaswellas
gethighscoresthesecondthemeiseasytopassbuthardtogetahigherscore
thethirdthemeisbothhardtopassandgethighscores.Thuswecreatedaseries
levelswitharelativelyuserfriendlydifficultycurveforplayerstoexperience.

5.Bettervisualization

Whenplayerscomplainaboutnotknowingthattheywilldieiftheyflyoutof
thescreen,Ididresearchonboththedesignandartaspects.ThenIfiguredoutI
shouldnotonlychangethetutorialbutalsovisualizethatflyingoutisdangerous.
Insteadofmakingtheborderslookhorrible,Ihollowouttheterraintomakeit
lookmuchthinnerandkeptthesurfacethesame(soitwontchangethegameplay
part).Visually,playerwouldfeelunsafeiftheywereclosetoflyingout.

Closingthoughts

IwasreallyhappywithwhatIwasabletoaccomplishandlearnedfromthisproject.Its
challenged,exhaustedandexcitedmeagreatdeal.Ihadavaluableandwonderfulgamejam
experienceandgainedbetterdesignandartskills.ImalsogladthatwhenIlookback,thereare
alotmoredeepertreasuresformetodiscover.Overall,itwasanawesomeexperience!Illkeep
workingonthisprojectandmakeitbetter!