Bathysphere

Educational iPad game about discovering and cataloging fish.

General Info

• Developer: RadishBox
• Release date: May, 2015
• Platforms: iPad, PC

Description

“Submerge the seas in Bathysphere, and encounter and catalog different species of fish."

This game was co-developed as a research project when I studied at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, aimed to test game design methods to appeal to learning based on a more ludic experience.

Game Design & Mechanics

The main goals of this game was to teach players about different species of fish and where they inhabited.

These goals, translated to game mechanics were:

• Player carries a log of species they discover, with a data page about it inside (sort of like a pokedex).
• Levels are scattered around the globe, divided in areas. Each area is a real marine zone.
• Each level is played vertically, from the sea surface to the bottom.
• During each level, the player moves the ipad around or the mouse to control the camera.
• In order to catalog a certain species, the player must “scan” it with the camera during a variable amount of time.
• This amount of time varies depending on the species. The “rarer” the species, the harder it gets.
• Difficulty of scanning a certain species varies according to: its size, its speed and depth at which it spawns.
• Species must spawn randomly and with increasing rate.

Features

• Procedurally animated water and ocean floor, with perlin noise.
• All species have a simple A.I., following a 3D steering behaviour.

Roles & Tasks

I worked on this game with my artist friend Pablo Mendizabal (You can check more of his amazing work here). We developed the concept, came up with the mechanics, planned & managed the development and release via Google Play.

Being a part of a two-man team, I occuppied different roles with varying tasks from concept creation to delivering the final product:

• Game design:

Came up with core game mechanics and expanding around them. Paper prototype testing and game balancing.

• Project management:

Used Trello as a kanban board to organize and delegate tasks.

• Software engineering:

Designed and developed the game architecture. Managed version control with Git+Bitbucket. Planned and carried out tests.

• Gameplay, UI and shader programming:

Developed designed game mechanics. Programmed the technical solution based on the designed architecture. Coded high and low level behaviours. Co-designed and programmed the UI. Coded procedural behaviours.