Planker Pro

Photosensitive Warning:
This video contains flashes of light that could trigger seizures for people with visual sensitivities.

Synopsis:

     Planker Pro is an asymmetrical 4 player game where the opposing sides face off to complete their own objectives and win the game. 1 Player plays as a cop on a segway. Their job is to try to taze and arrest the plankers to prevent them from reaching their goal or have all 3 plankers in jail at the same time to win instantly. The other 3 players are the plankers. Their job is to work together to gain a collective street-cred goal while avoiding getting tazed by the cop. The plankers gain street-cred by planking on different objects based on their current objective.

planker-pro Screenshot.png

Contributions:

     My role on this project was Lead Designer and Level Designer. As Lead Designer I gave overall vision to the game and gameplay. In this role I was also tasked with all aspects of the design work including UI, UX, systems, and audio. 

     As Level Designer I created the city environment where players would play and explore. While making the level I kept a couple of gameplay concepts in mind. The cop and the planker have different movement abilities so I wanted to play with the verticality of the city. To accomplish this there are the upper and lower areas with different sections of the map offering ramps or stairs to take advantage of. I also wanted to keep the plankers moving around the level. This is so the cop would be able to find them more easily because the plankers could not just camp in one area. This was accomplished by having different sections of the map offer different materials to plank on.

HighresScreenshot00000.png
HighresScreenshot00002.png
HighresScreenshot00003.png
HighresScreenshot00004.png
HighresScreenshot00005.png
HighresScreenshot00001.png

Production:

     Planker Pro started as a junior level class project with a small team. This team consisted of 1 designer, 1 artist, 1 programmer, and 1 producer. After the first 6 weeks of production, we had to cut down the games in class from 6 to 3. Planker Pro was the first game to make it through these cuts. We then drafted 1 more designer, 1 more artist, and 1 more programmer from the cut teams. With these new team members, we were able to evolve the game into something much more interesting and fun.

     We changed the game from a free-for-all planking competition to a team-based game where teams of 2 cops vs 2 plankers would face off to complete different objectives. After this, networking and balancing the game proved to be more difficult than we initially thought. To fix these issues I redesigned the game to be 1 cop against 3 plankers. This fixed the issue of the host player not being able to have the same UI and functionality as the joined players. The change also fixed the balancing issue of 2 cops being much more over powered than the plankers.

Team Members:

  • Lead Designer - Level Designer: Devin Broughton 

  • Environment Art and UI: Nikki Pito 

  • Characters and Animation: Ryan Kirtlink

  • Programmers: Josh Brandl, Ty Wood, Austin Jubrey, Joey Gallahan 

  • Game Designer: Chris Jeffery

  • Producer: Nathaniel Parkinson