Design
We wanted to keep the employees of DMD engaged in our game. To do this, we defined two key touchstones:
- Freedom and ownership
- Bite-sized content
Every design decision we made harkoned back to these principals, even the choice of platform.
The game groups employees from different parts of DMD, and tasks them to complete various tasks around the site, following a month-long narrative. Each group will complete the same tasks, though in a different order, and at different locations.
To keep the strategy in the minds of the employees, the game will require no more then 5 minutes of playtime each week, but will stretch over 5 months. One month for each distinct part of the strategy.
Character Creator
To facilitate a "Magic circle" around our experience, the employees will create a unique robot that represents them as they play. Robots were chosen as they represent every coworker of DMD working towards the same goals, despite being split into smaller groups.
The creator itself if created using a data-object for each body part. This means it is super each to add new parts or create an entirely new system for a different scenario.
Parts will react to other bodyparts to create emergent results, some torsos will spawn four arms instead of two, others might only have one leg.
In addition to being able to change the individual parts, the employees of DMD can also choose a color-scheme for each part and an expression for their robots display.
By using a two dimentional color-scheme instead of painting entirely in black and white, I created an artist friendly way of colorizing the finished robots which would allow for accent colors.
Factory Minigame
I was also in charge of creating the minigame for our vertical slice of the experience.
This minigame asks employees to solve puzzles in a scenario related to the strategy of DMD.
The minigame has three levels of increasing difficulty, but is designed to be completed in around 5 minutes.