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 Floaters is an action game intended for Xbox Live Arcade, designed and brought to a beta demonstration (via XNA) by a team of games design and games programming graduates at the University of Huddersfield in 2009.
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Overview
 We pitched a light-hearted, sci-fi themed game with the unique selling point being a 2-player co-operative play style. We chose this niche when striving for unique puzzle and gameplay design opportunities. The game combines 2-player puzzle stages with occasional bouts of melee combat and boss battles.
Floaters would be set in the far future, tasking its two players with roles as time agents. They play as Tim and Chrono, whose sole duty it is to prevent Evil Villain X from founding an empire to span milennia. The heroes travel to medieval, Viking, Wild West, piratical and cyberpunk eras of their history, solving puzzles and fighting their way through swathes of EVX's cloned minions.
The project was designed and developed within a 6-month cycle, by a team of newly-introduced designers and programmers. The course's graduates had their finished demos appraised by visitors from nearby Rockstar North and Team 17.
My Role
 I worked as design lead for this successfully-delivered demo, with roles including:
- Design document writing and management
- Pooling puzzle ideas and contributing my own to form the game's level structure
- Concept design for a futuristic set of levels
- Play-testing with paper-crafted and digital mock-ups
- Liaising with the programming team on gameplay design ideas
- Producing asset lists for the art team and audio technician
- Modelling of the game's hub stage, and additional support for the other artists
- Writing a game treament for an end-of-year showcase [sample]
Team ACG
 Mike Brown (producer)- Murray Thomson (lead designer)
- James Oates (lead programmer)
- Design team: John Brumby, Liam Nicholson, Jon Peters
- Programming team: Martin Heaton, Patrick Jordan, Habib Mohammed
Samples
Click to enlarge:
   
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