special weapons division
Solo project:
Skills
Technical Design
UX Design
Engine
Unity
Platform
PC
Project Duration
Jan 2021 - Dec 2021
Special Weapons Division is a 3D simulation game in which the player is tasked with combat training for a military AI prototype. The morality of this is put into question as the AI learns to think for itself and question the actions they’re being told to take.
Design Highlights
creating a lovable robot
One of my main goals for this project was making players care for the AI they’re tasked to train. I gave the AI a short and cute name (MiLA) and assigned her a gender to make her more relatable to players. When writing her dialogue, I tried to incorporate a mix of “robot speech” in the text itself and human-like elements in her curious nature. I had planned to add little features to make her seem more “human” when left idle for a while, such as making her hum tunes and randomly changing her visor color. I didn’t have enough time to add those and had to devote my time to more essential features instead.
smooth and Responsive Controls
Since controlling MiLA is the core of the game, I spent a lot of time making sure navigating her around the building is not only easy, but engaging. All controls for MiLA are mapped to the mouse buttons and the E key to avoid any unnecessary complexity. All of her actions have a corresponding sound effect. If an action can’t be performed, a different sound effect is played to let the player know.
Player Choice and Dialogue
Keeping in mind the limited scope of a two semester project, I wanted the player to have choices that have a meaningful impact on the game. I decided on a system that mimics many visual novels: giving the player a few choices that each correspond to a game ending and tracking those behind the scenes. This worked well, as testers were never surprised with the result that came from their choices.