The Rapid Treasure Escape

Student Project // RELEASED

The Rapid Treasure Escape

Local Co-Op Racing Game for Windows and macOS

The Rapid Treasure Escape is a fast-paced racing game where you are sharing a gamepad with a friend to control two trickster pirates on the run. Will you escape your pursuers and bring your treasure to safety?

FACT SHEET

Type Semester Project
Genre Local Co-Op Racing Game
Tools Unity, Git, Hack’n’Plan
Platforms Windows, MacOS
Timeframe 6 weeks
Released February 2018
Team Gina Graf, Daniel Turner, Manuel Ott, David Wildemann

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

THE PROJECT

In our first semester project at the Cologne Game Lab we were asked to create a ludic game, meaning a game that focuses on having a fun core mechanic. We quickly came up with the idea of two people sharing a gamepad in a racing game, making them communicate in order to succeed.

FIRST STEPS

I enjoyed the creative process a lot since this was the first digital game I worked on as a designer. During the concept phase I applied my experience from my former design studies to generate a lot of ideas and include the whole team in the idea finding process. The toughest lesson to learn was to cut features and reduce complexity, but in the end, it benefited the gameplay immensely and made us focus on the core experience.

DESIGNING FOR PROCEDURAL LEVELS

One of the most challenging tasks was to make up rules for the spawning behaviour of obstacles and the generation of the procedural levels. To do so, I built levels and obstacles by hand and extrapolated values like the length and difficulty of the track, as well as the number and difficulty of obstacles.

LOOK AND FEEL

Another big part of my responsibilities was the overall user experience. I adjusted the values of our rowing mechanic, implemented the tutorial, created assets for the user interface and designed the menu flow. I also worked on music and sound and created the branding of the game.