Escape Communicator
3D Multi-player Puzzle-solving Game
Aliens want to connect with human worlds, so five ghost-shaped superior robots have been trained to head to the Earth. Players as robots are taking a final test in a space station, with differentiated communication abilities and barriers. They are required to solve puzzles and escape the place together while participating in an ultimate mission on Earth.
Mentor: Dan Scott
Genre: First-Person, Multi-player, Escape-room, Puzzle-solving
Engine: Unreal
Platform: PC
Team Size: 6
Duration: 13 weeks
Game Trailer
Roles & Responsibilities
Game/UX Design
In charge of product structure, game features and detailed documents;
I prototyped and iterated holistic gameplay (puzzles & clues) on Figma and Miro, from beginning to end;
I designed and balanced players' communication abilities and constraints to make the game fun;
I adjusted and polished the difficulty progression and user experience based on testing results.
Storytelling
I conceived an original storyline and did a voiceover as the game intro, which partially belonged to the onboarding experience to demonstrate playing goals;
I searched for and discovered open-source sound effects to create a mysterious and engaging ambience, which gave immediate feedback on players' behaviours.
Production
As a product manager, I initiated and updated project plans and milestones/roadmaps that we could follow to achieve project goals;
I organized daily standups and took notes to document and move the project forward;
I structured the product and designed documents as final deliverables.
Research
I was responsible for all the playtests, including planning out, facilitating activities, recording testings and synthesizing outcomes;
I mapped out research directions that teammates could go towards;
I analyzed competitors' products to consolidate our concepts.
Tools
Prototype
Miro, Zoom, Paper, Figma, Unreal, Perforce, Photon, Vivox
Production
Office, Miro, Notion, Google Docs, Google Drive, Asana, Voice Memos, Garage Band, Axure
Communication
Emails, Discord, Zoom, in-person meetings
Project Brief
The Client
Patrick Parra Pennefather, Assistant Professor at UBC Theatre and Film and co-appointed with the Master of Digital Media Program (co-owned by UBC, SFU, BCIT, and ECUAD) where, for the past ten years, he has been developing a successful improvisation course for digital media collaborators as well as mentoring teams co-constructing scalable digital prototypes with over 50 companies and organizations (Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Blackbird, Finger Foods, Kabam, and more), who is passionate about bridging disciplines of practice and thrive in collaborative projects.
Our team collaborated with Patrick directly to deliver a digital media concept with prototypes and all design documents with the instructor, J.Dan Scott.
Target Users
People who work on collaborative projects in an interdisciplinary team, especially Patrick’s students.
Problem Statement
Newly collaborating on an interdisciplinary team, each teammate has their own communication and problem-solving skills, which may lead to a variety of unfamiliar situations that require them to be aware, listen, identify, communicate and reflect on, especially when they are trying to achieve project goals under time pressure. Sometimes, it is time-consuming, or there is a lack of adequate research interventions and time-saving simulated contexts for a whole team to realize challenges/problems before they communicate properly or solve them efficiently.
Plus, how to apply gamification methods to build scenarios that highlight the essence of collaboration and communication is a design challenge through digital products with easy accessibility to involve students with a research purpose.
Design Process
In the design process, we started with research and ideated as a group. Then we scoped down and combined some of our ideas into a wireframe. From MVP onwards, we were constantly hosting user research and usability testing to advance and polish the game experience.
Project Roadmap
Research
Ideation
Throughout the design process, I kept proposing gaming mechanic ideas, prioritizing developing features and following up on implementation progress to adjust sprint goals and tasks.
Ideation
Essence Statement
As a robot in a sci-fi space station, you are trained to think and behave like a human. In order to be eligible to participate in the essential task of flying to the earth, players are required to pass this final examination in isolated rooms by exploring the unknowns in unexpected environments, communicating with constraints designated randomly, and reflecting on messages they receive. You belong to a team of five, and the way to get out is by collaborating and exchanging information across diverse channels (text, audio, drawings, etc.). Only one opportunity is available for all of you, and a final report will be presented at the end. Plus, a 15-min survey is at your hand to help improve future research/testing. All of your efforts matter to the final outcome.
Core Loop
Game Overview
"Escape-Communicator” is a multi-player co-op communication-based puzzle game designed for 5 players in which the players are required to interact with each other to solve a series of puzzles while each player has certain communication constraints and restrictions.
There are 3 rooms with puzzles for each player that increasingly become more challenging in terms of difficulty and complexity, which means the communication among the players would be elevated in quality and quantity.
Players will start the game in a lobby, and when they are all ready, they will be separated into two groups, each in a separate area, a group of two and a group of three. Each team that finishes their puzzle earlier can join the other team to help them unlock the other gate. As they enter the final level, they collaborate all together to solve the most challenging puzzle of the game.
In this new approach to the regular escape room games, each player has their own communicational constraints and perceptions of the environment. This problem-solving experience should include simultaneous communication, negotiation, and solution-finding processes in a limited amount of time to solve the puzzles and escape. This game is aimed at helping analyze the interdisciplinary communication and collaborative problem-solving capabilities among teams regardless of the context of the project they are working on.
Key Features
Space Station Exploration
Explore unknown areas in a space station with lockout gates, open the gates, and explore more.
Unique Experience
Enjoy your unique perception of the environment. Find out your and your peers’ abilities and constraints in the game, in order to find ways to connect, communicate and share your observations, findings, and perspectives by using specific channels for interaction.
Fragmented Puzzles
Discover the clues related to puzzles. You need to share the clues you found to form the ultimate puzzles. Cooperate to solve them together to unlock the gates.
World Setting
Nowadays, aliens reside in the same galaxy as Earth; they have high-end technologies to build ghost-like robots to execute missions, mainly communicating with humans and gathering data on Earth. The sci-fi space station is an experiment location utilized to facilitate a final test for these robots in order for them to be certified to participate in the ultimate mission heading to Earth. No humans know where the aliens live or what they look like, and they are unaware of the existence of the space station.
Storyline
Five superior alien-created robots called specters have been trained to travel to Earth to connect with as many humans as possible and bring some information back to their planet as research data. Before leaving the space station, the final stage is an exam to see whether they are ready to head to Earth or not. The test is based on human communication approaches and includes some puzzles to assess the robots' human-oriented communication characteristics as well as their capacity to grasp the human environment on Earth. They've had a human mentor, Dr. PPP, who decides whether they've passed the test and are ready to go to Earth or not.
Characters
There are two players’ archetypes: those who can see hidden objects and type in the chat box, and the ones who can see details in the environment and speak by voice. Upon starting the game, players' communication channels will be limited to those in the same room that they begin with. As the game progresses and doors open, players will be placed in the same communication channels so that all players can communicate with each other to solve the final puzzle.
Types: (✓abilities, x constraints)
1. Player 1 & 5 - ✓Normal vision + see chat x hear, type
2. Player 2 - ✓Normal vision + see chat+ type x hear, speak
3. Player 3 & 4 - ✓ Unique/Red vision + listen + type + see chat x speak
All the players can see things but in two kinds of visions, and they can see text messages in the chat box. Normal visions also mean that they can see UI menus on boards to interact with, e.g. paintings, graphs on walls, etc. Meanwhile, All of them can hear BGMs and door-open sound effects. However, “hearing” abilities mean that they can hear others’ in-game voices/speech and important sound clues.
Mechanics:
1. The roles are assigned based on the sequence in which the players join the server.
2. All avatars look like ghosts with the same 3D models.
3. Each avatar has a different colour on their skin and a name display/label/status bar over their head.
4. They can walk around, jump and interact with objects in the space station environments.
5. Based on the vision they have, they see the same items in different colours. To be specific, red colours on objects mean vital clues, which can be distinguished by players 3 & 4 only.
6. Depending on their hearing abilities, players can hear sound effects of clues and others’ voices.
7. When the player communicates, the name display/label on head will automatically show real-time status.
Basic User Flow
There are four main stages of this process — before the game starts, at the start of the game, in-game and the game is over.
MVP Product Structure
This diagram complied detailed features, players' in-game paths and win conditions to show how the prototype worked.
User Testing
We initiated the user testing process at a very early stage of the project and maintained the essential procedure throughout the implementation of our product. Due to networking challenges we had, several types of tests were conceived to help point out our research and development directions. A total of 25 testers, mainly CDM students and faculty, participated in our external tests, including the following formats of activities, whose testing procedures were slightly different and focused on the beginning facilitating, middle observing and final questioning (incl. interviews & questionnaires).
Test Processes
Since there were 4 formats of testing, each had a moderately different process.
Zoom Puzzle Activities
A facilitator hosts all the breakout room puzzles.
In-Person Escape classrooms
Two researchers in two isolated rooms respectively facilitated and observed the testing process.
Paper Puzzle Difficulty Level Testing
One teammate guided the testers and the others two mates took notes and set timer for records, respectively.
Unreal Prototype Playtests
Two observers were not enough to have effective observation or recording, then we shifted to having five observers at the same time.
Seeing that our multi-player game requires five players to join at the same time, in order to gain valuable insights and facilitate tests effectively, we set these stages in digital (Unreal) playtests:
Feedback & Results
"Feeling fun, I like the experience you were able to explore and move around especially jumping; I highly appreciate that your team worked on the unique approach for the escape room game."
Prototypes & Iterations
Style Guide
Challenges & Solutions
1. Fixed Plans vs. Flexible Deadlines
When we posted the project plan at the very beginning, everyone agreed on that. However, with the moving steps from pre-production to production, technical challenges and communication misalignment impeded deliveries of tasks. Later on, other promising plans were affected by obstacles.
Communicated difficulties and expectations;
Re-adjusted plans and goals;
Understood people’s situations and changed expectations;
Kept flexibility for future steps;
Encouraged rather than pressured teammates.
2. Prioritizing Iteration Lists/Tasks
Everyone had strong opinions on implementing features, and people were attached to what they thought was the most important.
Listened to their “whys” and asked follow-up questions;
Empathized with others’ goals/purposes and general vision;
Brainstormed feasible ways to reach a compromise;
Validated results through user testing.
3. Misalignment of Prototypes
We initially overestimated the degree of alignment with the client's vision. Consequently, we had the wrong understanding of the same vocabulary. What is a “playable” prototype?
Enlisted specific features or attributes of the prototype;
Assessed the tangible and intangible project parts;
Aligned our communication styles to make people more responsive;
Added sub-channels for each pipeline for updates to align developing processes;
Learned conflict resolution skills.