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About Zero & One

The game follows two robot friends, Zero and One, who have crash-landed on an abandoned planet. In order to escape, they must make their way through the ruined remains of the planet to get back to their ship. On the desolate grey planet, bits of green remain in sprouts that have somehow survived. As Zero and One proceed towards their spaceship, they help regrow life on the dead planet.

Zero & One is a cooperative puzzle-solving adventure game. The key mechanics are platforming, collecting resources, and solving puzzles. Each player controls a robot that can move, jump, and use a resource. For Zero, the resource is water, and for One the resource is light. Players work together in order to solve puzzles and advance towards their ship.

Development Information

  • Total Project Length: 2 months, 2013
  • Team Size: 5 developers
  • Role: Level Designer
  • Weekly Work Hours: 15 hours
  • Engine: GuildEd (proprietary Guildhall engine)

My Responsibilities

  • Created and balanced mechanics between all levels
  • Designed level flow and gameplay within and between the different levels, such that players learned new mechanics gradually and the puzzles increased in complexity over the course of the game without a sudden change in difficulty
  • Implemented solutions to increase conveyance to the player in a game with no text or voice over. This included designing animating joysticks to demonstrate directional aiming and careful level design that required players to learn cooperative game mechanics before they encountered complicated puzzles
  • Worked closely with artists and programmers to create objects whose intended use was obvious to the players
  • Supported the team by putting in extra effort to complete their wishlist features

Postmortem

What Went Right
  • Delivered Co-op for the 1st time in GuildEd
  • Team is very receptive to feedback, changes, and felt free to give feedback
  • Change handled well, inclusion of new team member went smoothly and quickly
  • Programming done for Alpha, so programmers could make levels
  • Team had a great attitude, communicated well
  • Did not add features for Beta
What Went Wrong
  • Feature Creep added hours
  • Did not hit asset locks (only made it one time)
  • Scrum attention. At busy milestones we added work at end rather than change scope to incorporate challenges
  • Did not update Asset Database consistently
  • Design of HUD – a lot of feedback and iteration and it's still not perfect
  • GuildEd updates – game did not work after unannounced changes to the engine were pushed through
  • Alpha was "Hair on Fire" milestone
  • Code was challenging for level designer to edit- programmers had to directly change variables for balance
What We Learned
  • How to Incorporate playtester feedback appropriately
  • SCRUM was hugely beneficial. Planning 1st four milestones at start illustrated scope and helped organize tasks
  • Don't be afraid to re-scope to core mechanic when it's not working
  • Ladders are more difficult than you think
  • Adding levels required game balance

Screenshots