Junkhill Drifters

2 stages of gameplay - firstly build your car and tackle your friends to steal their car parts, then race it and pick up the boosts along the twisting and turning racing track

REQUIREMENT

Combination of

2 SPORTS

Game Design Document

Design Pillars Key Features

2 types of Gameplay

First build your car, then bring it to the tacing track!

Lighthearted

A party game that let's join in on the fun and chaos!

Competitive

Compete against your friends to take it all home!

Fast Paced

Keep up, as speed is a big deal in this racing game!

Game Loop Objectives

Build

Desgin your own soap box car with random parts

Race

Race down the crazy track against your friends

Win

Finish the race first,

then play again!

My Contribution Content

Game Design

As a designer, my main focus was on the gameplay of the game. We started out designing the building phase of the game to later connect it with the racing phase to complete the game loop. We made multiple iterations on the such as modifying the difficulty during the first phase and which rewards it should come with by winning, to modifying the feeling of driving the racing cars which we would have both internal and externals playtests on

Narrative Design

Junkhill Drifters isn't dependent on one specific story and could do well with any other theme, but we decided to settle for a lighthearted and cartoony vibe. The colorful world with inspiration from other fun party games such as Mario Kart 8 Delux – vibrant and full of energy. Our narrative goes very well hand in hand with the other design disciplines that I worked on, e.g. our family-friendly gameplay

Level Design

After multiple prototypes of both levels, both build- and racing phase we would decide on some prototypes, which we would also later iterate on. We have considered every curve in the whole track and playtested the maps multiple times after each change to make sure the fun and the flow of the level didn't break anywhere

Project Management Scrum

Scrum Methodology

Every morning we would have a daily stand-up meeting where everyone got to tell the rest of their team what they been doing, what they will do and raise if they got any concerns or need help

Product Owner
As the product owner, I support the team by helping everyone stay on track with our game vision by looking over finished content to make sure it stays coherent and suitable for the final product

Design

Program

We would use post-it notes as our taskboard

Design Details Deep Dive

Gameplay Design
The game happens in two stages, and therefore the gameplay changes completely after the first phase but keeps the same level of intensity

During Building Phase

Pick up the randomly thrown car parts
Tackle other players to steal their parts
Return one of each type of car part to your car

Types of car parts

Wheel

Body

Engine

During Racing Phase

Grab the power-up carrot to drive faster
Bump into other players to get ahead
Drift in the curves to not fall behind

Carrot Boosters

Will make the player go faster for a limited amount of time

Winners of Building Phase

Gets extra lives depending on which place they ended up at – see table

Our initial idea was to let the winning players start further forward, but this quickly became a problem as we started playtesting. The advantage only lasted for a short while for the winning player. We reworked this into the extra lives system and it became much better of a reward for all players

Keep up!

The leading player controls the camera and if you fall outside of the screen you will lose a health point and respawn again at the next checkpoint

Checkpoint System

Once the player who's in the lead reaches a checkpoint all of the other players will get instantly respawned at that checkpoint

This way the player will get a better chance at keeping up and making comebacks. It also helps players who are new to the game to not get instantly eliminated

World Design
The world of Junkhill has a large aspect of the cartoony style to it

The people who live here all know of the never-ending competition which echoes over the farmlands as 4 young divers sweep by, or perhaps crashes, their soapbox cars

No matter, the world is alive and very warm and welcoming to all new racers who believe they will take home the Championship

Character Design
Each character has a unique look to them, as they all have their very own color and a funny looking hat to tell them apart

Sticking to our lighthearted design pillar, all of the characters have cute and small so-called chibi inspired looks while wearing their favorite racing suit

Level Blockout
While designing the building phase area we tried out a few different prototypes before settling for one which we think would become the fairest as the car parts will drop down from the middle and each player will have to run up to one another to fight for the parts

Building Phase – Blockouts

Trying out different angles

Building Phase – Level Design Concepts

Collision & Set Dressing
After creating the racetrack level we noticed an issue with the collisions, players would get stuck. We solved this by making all of the materials bouncy. This benefited us in many ways such as now the players can bounce off the railings instead of getting stuck and also bounce into each other for more action while driving

While placing the boosters we thought about how to make them a risk to take for a great reward in return because of the increased speed which the player will receive upon going out of their way to snatch one – perhaps a few in the most difficult turns!

Racing Track Blockout

Final Racing Track

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Emailsara.svedlund@futuregames.nu

Sara Svedlund

Game Designer

Junkhill Drifters

Game Project at Futuregames

Combination of

2 SPORTS

Sara Svedlund

Sara Svedlund

Game Designer