Rock Hunting with Mohs
An educational video game for 2-5th graders designed to teach the basics of geology.
Project Information
Rock Hunting with Mohs is a puzzle adventure game. You play as Mohs, a bird obsessed with repairing a torn-up rock guide.
This was a project developed as part of Christopher Weaver's Video Game Development course at Wesleyan University.
Medium: PC/Mac Video Game (Unity)
Role: Gameplay Designer, Programmer, Level Designer, Writer
Duration: 13 Weeks
Accolades: Won first place in course competition
Release: Available on itch.io
Responsibilities
Level and Gameplay Design
Designing, specifying, and implementing the flow of gameplay between the adventure and educational sections. Used google workspace and JIRA to manage milestones and requirements.
- Design of Scratch Kit and Streak Plate scenes.
- Dialogue interaction pacing, content, and flow.
- Themed NPC puzzles engineered to reinforce learning.
- Map layout, structure, and implementation.
- Implemented layout and collision using Unity's Tilemap and Rule Tile tools.
- Fully designed and implemented each of the game's four levels.
- Designed, programmed, and implemented digital versions of real-world geological tests which children could replicate after playing.
- Created 15 NPC puzzles that provided gameplay variety while reinforcing learning about rocks.
Achievements:
The initial design proposal for the scratch kit, presented by Shannon, our producer, as part of the game pitch.
The first mockup of the scratch kit I programmed and implemented in Unity in collaboration with our UI designer, Maze.
The final version of the scratch kit in use by a fourth grader during field testing at the local elementary school.
Programming
Built, tested, and fixed scratch/streak scenes, tilemap and sprite collisions, and dialogue trees using Unity 2023 and C# 9.0. Collaborated with other programmers on implementation, code reviews, and technical designs through daily stand-up meetings.
- Wrote and edited technical design document including documentation requirements and style guide.
- Developed module for detecting and responding to mouse and touch screen input in the scratch and streak scenes.
- Extended functionality of Yarn Spinner tools to add support for dialogue tracking between scripts.
- Built systems to handle scene transitions and initialization from Scriptable Objects.
- Worked alongside programming team to implement multi-stage NPC interactions using UnityEvents and Yarn Spinner dialogue.
- Conducted code reviews and managed team bug board.
- Tracked code team progress using JIRA.
Writing
Wrote, edited, and implemented non-tutorial dialogue for each of the game's NPCs. Used Yarn Spinner to create branching and reactive dialogue that interfaced with objects in Unity through code.
- Designed NPC dialogue trees.
- Gave each character their own names and speech quirks.
- Implemented dialogue using industry-standard Unity plugin software Yarn Spinner.
- Copy edited tutorial dialogue written by other team members.
A dialogue tree from the game's second level. Implemented using Visual Studio Code and Yarn Spinner, with visual scripting used to track the tree.
Acknowledgements
Rock Hunting with Mohs would not have been possible without every member of our incredible team: Shannon Lin, Leigh Allen, Tim Goggin, Maze Labowitz, and myself. Special thanks to Professor Weaver, Jesse Herrnson, and Reilly Manton for their wisdom and advice during the development process.
