Trakhell is an endless runner game influenced by popular smartphone games such as Jetpack Joyride, Sonic Dash, and many others that were popular during the 00's and early 10's. The character running below is a track athlete who was given a new high tech suit by his track coach to improve his endurance through controlling their running pace by switching colors to wearer's condition.
Disclaimer: This game is not completed as intended
My design goals for the game were to make the player feel that their track athlete in practice through game feel. I did this by using my track experience since I'm a track student-athlete. Through my years being involved with this sport, the most important lesson I've learned was knowing how to pace myself and conserve energy to survive practice and keep proper form and technique for optimal improvement. I decided that teaching the player knowing when to expend and conserve their energy was going to the base mechanic since expending all your energy right away will make feel that practice/ workout an eternal hell .
In order for me to achieve this goal I decided that player should not have stamina bar depleting since I thought it would be too easy for the player to know when to expend and conserve their energy to give the game more realism since there's no stamina bar in real life . The idea of using a high tech suit came from the idea of how athletes use equipment during practice to handicap their performance but, increase their athletic performance. I decided on a color suit to signal to the player their status. Blue being good, yellow being ok, red being bad.
The player also has a dash mechanic by pressing the forward/right button that will propel them a head but, will burn their energy faster causing the high tech suit to change color to appear more quicker. The player can recover their energy by collecting water bottles that randomly appear depending on the color of the high tech suit. Through this system, I want the player to understand the importance of conserving their energy intuitively without any explanations or guidance. This risk vs. reward system makes the player think about dashing since, yes, the water bottles appear more frequently and get more distance quicker, the player will burn more energy or can decide to go slower to save energy and last longer but, make the water bottles appear less and gain less distance.
The development time was about one month and the development team was myself for the art, programming, animation, and sound. Even though the game is not completed, I am still proud of my creation since I've learned about my development process, design philosophy, and the importance of core game loop and base game mechanics.
