Working on Dimension Drifter was a unique experience.

Noisy Club Digital was at an odd stage of its life. Coming off the back of the Tobacco Demo, having just finished a massive step in that project, we felt we needed to make a name for ourselves and push the new knowledge we’d gained. So, we entered the Big Mode Jam 2023.

As the team lead, it was my job to guide our small four-person studio through this episode of its growth. I pushed the team towards developing a 3-D game, fresh ground for the studio. We’d never attempted the challenge before. Whether that was the best idea or not, who knows? I believe it was. Either way, we took the risk.

Early in development, my job was to guide the team towards a central idea. I played a crucial role in crafting the vision for the game, leading the charge in every facet of development, from preparing the core mechanics to the world design to the backstory framing the game. The universe the game is set in is the same universe as Tobacco. I also wrote and maintained the GDD for the project.

Throughout most of the development, my task was developing, designing, and beautifying the track segments. During this phase, I also worked closely with the lead programmer, helping him grow, refine, and refactor the car controller, level generation, and gameplay experience.

As development closed, I led the team in polishing the game and ensured we hit the two-week deadline one hour and one minute early.

I learned a tremendous amount from this game.

First, my design process massively benefited from hand-making design tools + prototypes as early and as often as possible. I work best iteratively, so by developing design tools early, I can begin testing and iterating earlier in the process. My mistake on Dimension Drifter was polishing the track segments too much before playtesting, locking them in, as it were, to a particular shape and state before I had tested whether that shape was fun. Visual aids, such as hand-drawn maps, could have assisted me far earlier.

Second, the importance of many avenues for providing player feedback. I learned that a fun game is a game where I, as a player, have interesting choices to make. To make an exciting choice, I have to have adequate knowledge of my potential options and enough information to adequately guess the consequences of these decisions. As a designer, I learned I need to ensure, via multiple avenues, that the player is getting enough information at any given moment to make interesting decisions. Of course, it’s a balancing act, but I realized that, at least early in development, it’s better to lean towards too much information than insufficient. The one caveat: try to ensure as little of this information is non-diegetic blocks of text as possible.

Third, the importance of the four-step event-narrative design. In a writing class at university, I learned about “Kishotenketsu.” This is a Japanese term, a series of stages outlining the primary sequence of events in any exciting interaction. These steps are Set, Push, Twist, and Conclude. An exciting event, be it a macro player experience, a long-form narrative, or micro, moment-to-moment gameplay, should follow these four steps. First, set the stage for the player – give them information, setting, and action. Second, push. Let the player experience the stage you’ve selected and see the consequences of their actions unfold. Third, twist. Give the player an unexpected experience, or introduce a new variable to the equation, and force them to interact and overcome this climactic conflict. Fourth, conclude. Lead the player from that experience, giving them catharsis, and transition towards the following four steps. On a macro level, using this design philosophy ensures every aspect of the player experience undergoes narrative development, ensuring the game feels “deep” and “alive.”

Overall, the game went well, and I learned a lot. While it wasn’t a perfect success, I believe I did my job, grew significantly, and am a better developer for working on it.