Inspired by the famous internet meme, "Plagueis: Not a Star Wars Story the Jedi Would Tell You" is a personal project I worked on to test and showcase rational design practices.
Type a letter to activate all associated platforms.
Black letters are switched on permanently when typed.
White letters are switched on or off every time they are typed.
As described by Ubisoft veteran Luke McMillan in his Gamastura blog, rational design is "a way of objectively quantifying elements of user experience in order to create a consistent game play experience." The goal behind this formalized design process is to consider every atomic element of the game as a modifier of difficulty and systematically optimize game flow.
Step-by-step description of what I did in this project:
1) Quantifying every element of the game that has an impact on the difficulty curve by giving them a difficulty score.
2) Using a score system to design content on a sheet, planning for a linear and continuous increase in difficulty.
3) Creating the designed content in Unity.
4) Playtesting the game, tracking player deaths in order to compare the planned and observed difficulty curves.
The practice was a resounding success with a strong correlation between the designed and final difficulty curves, speaking to the usefulness of the rational design approach.
