Game Jam projects
From 2018 to 2020, I started learning hands-on game design by participating in game jams. As I gained experience, it slowly became my full-time profession. The projects below are a result of this learning process, including the award-winning game Unhackneyed.
On Unhackneyed your goal is to cross the ocean with a boat full of refugees, keeping as many people alive as it's possible. You're in a journey to freedom, running away from a devastating situation that consumed your country. Chose wisely what to do while facing the troubles of the voyage.
Winner of AFGRAL's Open Game Award 2019
Roles and Duties: Game Designer, responsible for:
Designing Mechanics
Narrative
Level Design
Unhackneyed was developed in 1 month as an entry for AFGRAL's Open Game Award in 2019. The contest theme was "freedom is priceless". As open-source tools were a must, the team opted for using Godot engine and Blender.
I designed the mechanics, missions, and game map, making sure it was documented and clearly communicated with the team. The creation process:
Started by thinking about what "freedom" meant to us
Once we decided it was going to be about refugees, we started doing research on the topic
Only after we had an aesthetic in mind we designed the mechanics
The goal was to have a light mood and visual, to balance out the heaviness of the theme. A touch of fantasy was included in the narrative to make it lighter. Every player decision should impact the short-term outcome - it could reduce the number of passengers, for example.
2D layout draft and mission mockup
Award Certificate
Localization
One of the challenges was to localize the game in 3 languages. I originally wrote the missions in English and translated them to Portuguese. We counted on a translator to review the text and adapt it to French.
To implement it I followed guidelines established by the programmer to format the 3 versions of the text to JSON. Then we ran tests to make sure it worked properly.
Contact
Feel free to reach out. I would appreciate a coffee chat!
E-mail: ana.carolina.m.franca@gmail.com