No Signal is a 2D platformer game that offers a unique blend of challenging gameplay and puzzle elements. Play as CRT-15, whose desire is to watch TV, but everything just seems to be against him. Embark on a journey for signal and navigate through the dangerous slums and city, with the ability to toggle objects throughout the environment to his advantage. Will climbing to the top be worth the trouble? Or will he lose his signal?
As the game director & coordinator, I supervised the production progress of the entire team and ensured that there was consistency in asset production by playtesting often and providing immediate feedback.
I know what each member of the team is working on, and I take into account the variables and conditions each member needs to follow / is limited to when considering the flow of production.
Before starting development, we begun drafting out and pitching the potential idea that would come about with our game. This concept was simply a character being able to toggle-switch their environment, and that players would need to navigate around it. Below are two variations of the same map, drafting a simple mock-up of what the game would come to be when creating it.
Since this game revolves around going higher, the team had agreed to create 2 - 3 separate environments for our game, each of them possessing their own unique color palettes. The following images are concept sketches provided by my team's artists for the game.
The different environments represent the 3 different hierarchies of the city. The first location is the slums of the city. This location is where trash is disposed and signal is the weakest. The second location is a central city where life is bustling and middle-class robots live. The final location is that of the skyscrapers, the highest of classes and they have all rights to dispose their trash out the window for it will land in the slums down below.
In the pitch, we determined that we wanted to have 11 levels in the game, all of which slightly increase in difficulty as the player progresses through the game. Although the lecturers were skeptical about our ambition, we went ahead and planned for 11 different levels to be made.
At the start of development, priorities were focused on the basic mechanics of the game and the core game loop.
All the assets used were draft tile assets, and that allowed us to create tilemap-level mockups. The artists were able to provide a draft sprite of the player character, which became our placeholder player entity.
The core mechanic of the game is that the player has the ability to toggle the environment around themselves. Toggling the environment will reflect on the player by the light on his head and remote.
Ensuring this mechanic was implemented before the alpha release was a top priority during the development period, as it was the mechanic that made the game special.
While creating the mechanics, we integrated the mechanics and testing into a sandbox level. It would showcase every aspect of the game that had already been developed and works for playtesting each feature to relevant extents, including how different obstacles would work with one another.
The level features interactions such as ladders, lasers, moving platforms, and many more, all of which are color-coded differently
The first step towards beta development would be to incorporate level design, as well as a learning curve into it. When designing levels, the team and I came up with a custom difficulty matrix for our game. Based on how difficult it is for a player to interact with these mechanics, we incorporate two or 3 mechanics in a fashion where the difficulty score on the matrix increases with each passing level.
After identifying and filtering the features that would provide a sufficient difficulty curve with each level, we got down to designing the levels utilizing those features. The following images below are some finalized designs of the first few levels, directly connected to one another.
For the last phase of development, new environment assets for the new area were provided, and we started creating more levels than we originally had. Since this new area has new mechanics, we reviewed the mechanics available in the level by reproducing a difficulty matrix to plan for a progressive difficulty curve.
In the new area, traversal focuses on a dashing mechanic that comes in the form of a pick-up battery. By obtaining this battery, the player would be granted a single dash charge.
With this mechanic being core to the gameplay in the new area, the level designs had to revolve around this pick-up, including all other mechanics that work against the player.
After reviewing the matrix and brainstorming, we drafted out some level ideas, debating among ourselves on why certain levels may not have worked as intended. The following drafts were some of the levels and their final designs that passed internal reviews and were drafted out to real levels.
Towards the end, we decided that we needed cutscenes to better showcase the narrative of the game. In the process, we also decided that we should voice over the television since people actually do watch televisions with sound.
I did the voiceover recording for the television playing in audacity, and they are reflected within the game.
This marks the end of the development of No Signal, as well as the story of CRT-15 and his journey for signal! Remember to give it a try! You can download it from the DigiPen Games Library by following the button below!