Desert Level
Industrial Level
Underwater Level
Hydration Hunt
Hydration Hunt is a 4 player isometric shooter/tower defense game where players compete for the precious resource of water. Players collect water from a central source on the stage and take it back to their own, slowly decreasing, pool. Once a player runs out of water, they start losing health and eventually die. Using their special abilities & the environment, each player's goal is to outlast the competition by any means necessary, including stealing water from others.
TL; DR:
-Conceptualizing: 4 player PVP game themed around water scarcity, everything was based around that, from characters to goals, to make game asymmetric, characters had unique abilities
-Development: I created a soundtrack and sound effects to fit the theme of the game and each stage
-Testing & Release: We made several core gameplay changes in testing, like how players get water and how the stages work
Conceptualizing
My team and I chose a social issue to jump off from. We chose water scarcity and started building a game around it. We chose to make a pvp arena game combined with a tower defense game the overall goal being to outlast the opponents by getting more water. With an incentive for players to engage established, we made the game asymmetrical by giving each character unique abilities that changed how they would accomplish their goal.
We sketched up some environments to echo the themes of scarcity and pollution such as a desert, an area surrounded by smog and factories, and an area surrounded by polluted water.
Social change concept
Gameplay on gamepad
Characters
Task sheet
Folio Work
Development
We had around one month to create the entire experience, from conceptualization to final release, which meant that tasks had to be done exceptionally quickly.
I was the sound designer. Since our game was primarily based around "water", I had to create sound effects and a soundtrack which would reflect the theme and environments.
The sound effects were created with a mix of built-in loops from logic pro, performance patches, filtered instruments, and live recordings. The majority of water sound effects were live recordings of water in a bowl. Some of the characters' sounds were filtered grunts from me.
The soundtrack had me look into various other "water" themed games and films. I ended up creating songs to reflect each environment. Each stage got its own theme, as well as the title & winners. Each stage would reflect the environments in its instruments.
The "Industrial" map featured a variety of distorted synthesizer patches which featured the word "metal", and arpeggiators to reflect the mechanical feel of the area.
For the "Underwater" map, I looked into logic pro patches which featured the word "water", I found two which I liked, created a melody, and made the rest of the track around it.
The "Desert" map was the most straightforward, I used a reverberated acoustic guitar to create a melody and just made a fast-paced rock track from that.
Testing and Release
We went through several iterations of design before reaching the final product. We started with spheres of water that players could collect. Players didn't understand this and weren't incentivized to engage with the game. The final version has players get a pool of depleting water, if the pool is empty, the player slowly loses health.
Additionally, the environment wasn't engaging enough for the players to get the theme. We created animations to provide an identity to each stage and incentivize players more. Seeing an opportunity to make the stages more dynamic, we gave each stage a "gimmick" which we agreed on.
-Industrial: Smog fills up the screen, obscuring the players' view
-Underwater: Toxic water levels rise and fall, players lose health when in contact with water
-Desert: Parts of the stage give way, players have to maneuver around those hazards
With all those in place, we polished and released the game. We each received peer acclaim for our contributions to the project.
Playtesting at Babycastles
Playetesting at NYU
