Juglr is a game designed to leverage the technology and functionalities of the Nex Playground console, transporting players into a unique world where to experience the joy of juggling.
mollica Aps
Unity
Singleplayer
Nex Playground
ROLE AND TASKS
My main role throughout the development of the game has been as a Level Designer, interfacing with the rest of the team to bring the content from a prototyping stage to a fulfilling experience.
Developed, iterated, and released the over 60 levels of the game
Implemented level logic using custom blocks
Updated the content of the game to fit the necessary console requirements
Gathered playtesting data from the target audience and iterated following the results
Communicated with other departments to limit blocks and meet deadlines
Communicated with the client to ensure the respect of the brief
Avaliable on Nex Playground
WHAT IS JUGLR?
The player’s avatar can have a variety of body configurations, and the levels have to drive players towards learning and accepting new movements and ways to interact with the challenges of the game.
EXPLORATION
The physical interactions between the player’s avatar and the environment are at the core of the experience, and each level needs to give space to explore this relationship and find the best answer to the given question.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
The target audience is a wide age range of children, so the level must have a clear objective, limited duration, and the need to engage the players' creativity while guiding them towards the final goal.
BUILT FOR CHILDREN
Each level of Juglr is built using three key components: Level Layout, Body Layout, and Objective. These modular elements can be mixed and matched to deliver a variety of experiences that leverage the original design intent and maintains coherence and uniqueness throughout the game.
HOW TO JUGLR
The layout of each level is designed to maximize the interactions and focus on the movement, placing bouncy elements around the frame to keep the elements close to the centre of the screen making the experience more comfortable.
LEVEL LAYOUT
Body layouts have different specificities and require the players to modify the way they move and approach the game. Each body layout has to be accompanied by a level layout and an objective that enhances their movement necessities and resulting gameplay.
BODY LAYOUT
Every level has a clear objective that leverages and enhances the relationship between level layout and body. Objectives are clear and focus the action of the players towards specific movements or interactions, giving space to challenge and experimentation.
OBJECTIVE
Testing the first iterations of the game, it was clear that we needed an onboarding that would make our control scheme more natural to players. To achieve that, I built upon Nintendo’s four-step level design process, breaking the rigidity players had when approaching the game and bringing them into the fun.
FOUR-STEP ONBOARDING
Learning how to move using the shoulders is critical to the game's enjoyment, so it is the first component players need to understand and internalize.
INTRODUCTION
Knowledge is developed through the arms, heavily connected to the shoulders, allowing for a comfortable expansion of the movement possibilities of the players.
DEVELOPMENT
An experimental section introducing silliness into the gameplay, highlighting new ways of interacting with the world and preparing players for the variety of the content.
TWIST
The main onboarding section concludes with a showoff of the learnings, finally allowing players to use their entire body and allowing them to fully experiment with their learnings.
CONCLUSION
Keeping the target audience in focus, the onboarding does not have any hard fail condition, allowing the players to explore and learn how the various systems work without the pressure of failure looming behind their backs. This proved to be the best choice during playtesting, with kids fully embracing the spirit of the game and learning each new introduction with ease.
Before building the game, there had been experimentation and exploration of what the game was capable of, looking for a complete understanding of how far we could push the mechanics before moving too far from the target audience.
Playtesting with kids has been instrumental in understanding what worked and what didn’t, as they could give us a better understanding on the clarity of the various beats and make us truly understand what the experience was.
FINDING THE FUN
The first draft of the game was presented during the 2023 GDC, and it was only the first step of a long journey that brought us to refine the experience and deliver something that could fulfil our intent and deliver towards our target audience.
The development was also constrained by the release platform for the game: Nex Playground, which forced us to understand its strengths, and weaknesses, and design a game that could highlight the potential of the machine.
To safely deploy and test a build on the machine we had to comply with the requirements from the producer, and I had to make sure the content was up to standard, ready for testing, and fit within the prerequisites.
Constant talks between the development team and the client helped us throughout the entire development, to meet all the necessary requests, gather data, and deliver an experience everyone was satisfied with.
TO TECHNOLOGY AND BEYOND
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
The development has not always been a smooth ride, with rapid changes of direction, updates to the requirements, and always getting too close to meeting the necessary deadlines.
The team delivered because we stuck together throughout the entire process, understood the necessities of each department, and found a solution that could get us to the finish line with a high-quality product.
Every department had to make sacrifices for others, but the resulting product has greatly improved because of that, with a cohesive team delivering a cohesive and satisfying player experience.
The development of Juglr has been a tough ride, which tested my strength and motivation multiple times throughout the course of the project, but it has also been a great way to learn and understand aspects of the industry I had never experienced before.
The collaboration with the client has been one of the most taughtful aspects of the project. It allowed me to manage stricter guidelines and requirements while trying to maintain the nature of the game and the player experience people were enjoying.
Even though it is not the first project where I have participated as part of a development team, it is the one when collaboration has been the strongest and understanding the necessities of each member, even sacrificing my work for the good of the team and the project, made me truly understand how effectively people can collaborate together to achieve meaningful results.
