Ears Keeper
What is it?
Ears Keeper is a mobile Shoot'em up created in internship at Genopolys. It was developped using Unreal Engine 4.
Genopolys is a meeting place when people can learn popular science throught activities and event. It's affiliated with the Montpellier's CNRS. During my internship, Genopolys was programming classes to teach the 5 senses to primary/middle school kids (9 - 11yo). In a two member team (GA + GD), our goal was to prototype gameplays in order to teach the hearing.
Credits to: Léa HUGUET for all the art, Genopolys for the internship, HeatleyBros and Kevin McLeod for the musics
Target
The target is 9 to 11 years old kids. I was in contact with them that came to the internship place (thanks to their school) to learn how the five senses work.
Observing them, I figured few points that will help design choices :
- Killer/Achiever profile
- very imaginative
- short atttention time (10 minutes gameplay maximum)
- very sensitive about lose and win
- not comfortable with math and logic
- not comfortable with too abstract subject
- not comfortable with multiple goals
- don't like to read
In few words, they : like action games, are hyperactive, have a big suspension of disbelief
Shoot and Enemies' patterns
To content the target, the playable character (PC) must be controlled in real time (not turn based). I chose the Shoot'em up genre because it validate the first point and because kids love shoot at things. I wanted the game to be played using only one finger and I developed the enemies' detection system to had originality to the game.
From those features and choices comes shoot design and enemies' movement pattern design.
Shoot :
Because the game is one finger playable, shooting must be automatic. In order to keep a sort of aiming, the PC must be in front of an enemy during a short time to charge his bullets before shooting. That can only be possible with simple enemies patterns that can be remembered by the player.
Enemies' movements :
Because the player need to follow ennemies to shoot at them while not seeing them, their movement patterns must be simple, slow and predictable. There are 4 types of movement patterns share between 3 types of Ears Breakers. When an enemy spawn, the player can see the beggining of his movement and so, predict his trajectory. A feedback occur when the PC is facing an enemy.
Enemies' shots :
Because the difficulty increases while playing, they can be lots of enemies at the screen. Enemies' shots travel at slow speed, permitting the player to dodge them easily at the beggining but carefully at the end. There are 3 types of shots, one per enemy's type.
Learning
Because the main goal is to teach kids, the game uses soft and hard ways to gives knowledge.
Soft way :
The system and imagery behind the game tries to be the closest to reality. Enemies are headphones, speakers and planes (things that can be dangerous for ears), the life icon is the cell that permit us to listen, damage feedback is a tinnitus, PC see using echolocation... . While playing, the player will learn basics things unconsciously.
Hard way:
Because the difficulty grows, the game will be exhausting. A break is given between each waves, displaying a tip about how hearing work and ears diseases. It's the life icons that tells tips to the player. The given break time is use by the player in reading tips. The text is display step by step to not be too scary to read.
