Greetings! I'm Jaedon Wallace.

     As Game designer, my main role is to design the mechanics and to do the level design. But I also do audio design, some 2d design and help with other aspects as out ream needs.
     since we only had 3 weeks to work on this project, I figured a platformer would be well in our range. it would push us,but also give us enough time to polish. Since I was the game designer, I had to figure out the elements that we would need for a minimum valuable product, and what a reasonable time frame would be.  

     For all my own tasks I estimated around 25 hours of work but actually spent around 38.

Game design: 

   I knew we wanted to do something small, and achievable, but i still wanted something unique, this is why i created the bounce mechanic, I wanted the game to be a puzzle about when to and when to not hold the jump button. If the player holds the Jump button they will flutter and slowly descend, but if they let go and fall, and they will bounce if they hit the ground with enough velocity. Currently as it stands, the bounce and the flutter have too similar horizontal distance, which means that the only way for me use utilize the bounce mechanic is to put up a wall that the player has to bounce under.
     When I come back to this, I want to make the flutter and bounce more distinct from each other so the player can easily determine which mechanic to use instead of just trial and erroring it. I am really happy with the feel of the game it just needs some tuning, but it works!

Level Design:

   We decided that the end goal of the player was to collect 3 keys(eggs ) and then a door would appear. to account for this, the level design had to be circular allowing the player to access a "hub area" without having to back track. In the hub area all eggs are visible so the player can see the objective. The level has two main paths that when completed dump the player back in the hub and point them towards the other path. I really like the idea of seeing familiar places but with new meaning depending on what the player is doing. for this I created some jump pads that will add velocity to the player, however they are more powerful depending on the speed of the player. I really liked the idea of using the same jump pad multiple times and getting different results based on the player speed. 
     The hardest part of the level design was teaching the player to use the bounce mechanic, I really did not want to use a tutorial, I wanted the player to figure it out and feel smart. but with game testing, some players figured it out right away, but others just would keep trying to use the flutter mechanic to solve a puzzle. Since the level worked, and our project was due soon I just had to add some diagrams to the walls to guarantee that the player knew the mechanic existed instead of waiting for them to discover it. in a full game, I would like to make some linear levels that would force the bounce to happen and give the player time to try experimenting. this wraps around to the flutter and bounce having to similar of a horizontal gain, in a 2.0 build I would need to nerf the flutter or buff the bounce, but this would break our current level.

Blueprints:

     I actually did a lot of work on the blueprints, I focused mainly on the sounds, timing, and animations aspects. all of the squashing and stretching of the player/Enemies and bobbing of items was the work I did. i also did the enemy movement.

Audio design: 

     If I did not already have the sounds i would have to record them or find them. the hardest part is the usage rights. The raccoon sounds I got for free but i had to doctor out the background ambience. The chicken sounds i bought a while ago when i made the music. i would then split, arrange, retune, or adjust the speed of these sounds to better fit the context of the game. All the splat sounds, and bell sounds, and corn sounds  i recorded myself.

Music:

     The main menu music was some royalty free music that Patric found. All the in-game music was written by me two years ago, I guess I have always found chickens cute!

ART:

     In addition to everything else, I also created some new art assets. I modeled and painted the Corn kernels you see in game but i also did all textures of the barn wood, concrete and grass. however, i made these textures in black and white so our artist could decide on the colors he wanted for the level. I also created a Tri-planar material that allowed for a different material on top based by normal and has the input for the colors that the artist can override. 
I also dew Some UI elements for our game!

All in all, i think what I am most proud of in this project is the feel, everything is so fun and bouncy!