Dinner and a Heist
Duration: Sept 2024 - April 2025
Engine: Unity
Team Size: 5 people
Platforms: Jira, Miro, Discord, Google Drive, Microsoft Office, Github, Unity
Background Info
We want to give the player a sense of agency being a hacker, feeling the responsibility to complete their tasks and be rewarded for doing so. The player’s actions directly impact the level, which will further their experience in the heist gameplay. We would like the player to feel compelled to play this game and experience a comical situation with tricky puzzles and an interesting story.
Objective
The goal of this project was to create a comedic narrative leaving a lasting impression, to allow the player to feel like their gameplay has an impact on the story, and have players feel like they are pulling off a secret heist using puzzles, dialogue, and pressure
My contributions included game design, character design, 3D art, mission design, narrative design, and concept art.
It was my task to make this before production to determine the stages of the level. This included thinking of puzzles the team would approve of, the main narrative concept, and the stages of the level. We would focus on dividing and arranging the narrative into teach, test, and challenge. The difficult part was trying to reduce the scope while maintaining this framework. In the final game, we cut down the number of puzzles and excluded sections where mechanics would be introduced and never used again. (such as texting back your robber friends)
One of my tasks was to make the date, the only person you will see in the game. I had to make the bank owner look lovable, but the player still wants to rob from them. The challenge for this was the direction the team wanted to go. As the bank is right behind the date, it made sense for them to be skinny so you can see as much feedback behind them as possible. However, the team decided to prioritize showing the bank owner’s gullible personality.
The game’s gameplay does not go into detail about the backstory of why the player is there and what they are doing. There was a possibility of having a robber teammate text you all the context you need, however, we learned early on that players will not read heavy chunks of text. Our solution was to make a short comic that would explain what you are doing and why you are doing it. The screen would move panel to panel with slight animations throughout to give a short explanation for players with a short attention span. I wanted to focus on limiting the amount of text on each page and convincing the player that they want to rob this bank and deceive the bank owner. The challenge for this was making a hacker (player) seem likeable but with no personality, so that the player can play as themselves; and explain you’re robbing a bank with a team, and why you have to hack and be on a date at the same time.