Personal Games

We’re Ok

Designer, Artist and Programmer | Personal (Solo) | PC | October 2021 (2 weeks) | Game Jam (Theme: New Beginnings) | Released

We’re OK is a story-heavy puzzle platformer where the player can weaken or mend a broken father-daughter bond by completing or skipping puzzle segments.

 This game was made in two weeks for the Budding game jam. All assets were created by me (except music & SFX). I was keen to dabble in narrative writing, coding and UI design for this game.

• Narration Design: exploring a father-daughter bond in a backdrop of losing a terminally sick family member.
• C# Scripting: movements, UI updates using triggers, using playerPrefs, character toggle system
• 2D Art: characters, environment, narration bubbles

UI Design

I used Affinity Designer to design the UI and create sprites. I was keen to keep the UI minimalistic, given the short time frame. All the UI was made in Unity Canvas, using boolean functions to activate and deactive gameobjects based primarily on button clicks. Some of the buttons (eg. “skip hurdle” button) were controlled by scripts that monitored the number of clicks to show or hide buttons. Narration bubbles were individually made using Affinity Designer, and their visibility were also controlled by button clicks in Canvas.

I also made use of three cameras to show both Anita and Baapu (the leading characters) on the same screen, with the narration box on the righthand side.

Narrative Design

This was my first experience writing narration with different endings.

The game revolves around Anita, and Baapu (her dad) as they come to grips with losing the matriarch of the family to a terminal illness.

Due to the short timescale, I decided to focus the story on a singular incident, having two different endings, one a bit less positive that the other.

I wrote the narration in the context of text messages between Anita and Baapu, using emojis within narration bubbles.

Below is the narration that ended up in the game:

Gameplay Design

Having previously prototyped a game where the player could control two characters using the same controls, I was keen to explore this concept further, this time using a toggle system for the player to have more control on character movement. I also wanted to find a better solution for the camera logic, using a split screen to focus on each character.

Designing the toggle system

For the toggle system, I decided to use colours to differentiate between each characters. Baapu and his environment was blue, while Anita and her environment was pink. I then turned the active character yellow so the player was aware which character they were controlling. 

I also decided to use the Shift key for toggling between characters. I initially intended for the player to be able to move faster by using the Shift key, which is often used in other platformers, but in the end I did not feel that it was necessary, so adopted it instead for the toggle. 

Toggle mechanic in action.

Split-screens & camera logic

I opted for a horizontal split-screen rather than a vertical split-screen between the characters, since their y-axis position does not vary as much as their x-axis values. A horizontal split-screen also created less blind spots for the player. I implemented this mechanic using Cinemachine, creating two main cameras and two follow cameras with camera bounds, one for each character, as follows: