Service Bots

A 3D Party game made for Yogscast Game Jam 2020.

Take Aways

As I had participated in the Yogscast Game Jam in the previous year, the feedback that we got for our game was that it was difficult to tell what was happening within the game. The lack of sound and visual effects was indicated to be things that were missing from the game. I wanted to focus on these things so that I could learn the best ways to implement them.

Service Bots was the game I submitted for the Yogscast Game Jam 2001, hosted once again by the Yogscast joint with their December Live streams.

For this game jam, my roles encompassed the Game’s Design, Programming, and basic Level Design. My role had me focus on the functionality of the game as a whole, my overall goal for this game jam was to create a fun experience when interacting with the game’s mechanics.

Initial Ideas

Going into the game jam I knew that I wanted to create a game mechanic that was fun on its own, and that player would enjoy playing around with the character, rather than the game’s environment.

In order to achieve this, I considered 3 main lessons I learned from my previous submission to the Yogscast Game Jam in 2019…

• A player character/controller that felt good to move around inside the game environment

• A simple and easy to grasp central mechanic that was fun

• The previous points needed to have feedback to support their functions.

I came across the idea of throwing a pie at each other as the main mechanic. The feeling of “Throwing Pies at each other” was the central design aspect that I wanted to strive for.

Paper Prototype Levels

After developing the central mechanic and player controller, the game was now needing a goal and an alternate mechanic, this was to ensure that the player would have something to do and that they would not grow bored of the central mechanic.

To create the mechanic, I took inspiration from where the asset pack that the Pie model originated from, as it was one of many other foods that were inside the asset pack. I created the mechanic of “Eating food to gain powers.” As it is a common mechanic in other games and is a common affordance for any person who eats.

Player Experience Feedback

To finish the project, I went over many areas of the game to make sure that the player’s experience within the game, was well communicated on screen in addition to working within the game itself. I wanted to make sure that the player was never confused or didn’t understand the mechanics found within the game.

This included…

• Points increase and decrease on UI

• Particle Effects for Upgrade indication

• Player confirmations in the select screen

• Particle effects for food explosions

• Player reactions when hit