Designing

Cecity was a game I conceptualised and made a demo for in 2024, for the 'Production for a Client Brief' assessment. It was made in just over a month (April 22nd - June 4th)

The main idea I had going into Cecity was I wanted to create a game using the DualSense controller. I love the idea of using the triggers and the rumble to convey mechanics to the player in some meaningful way rather than just existing for the sake of existing.

This idea came about after spending loads of time playing Death Stranding recently. I love how they incorporate the DualSense into the Directors Cut. This is what inspiried me to want to try and make a game that might have mechanics tied closer to the controller itself.

Horror was the first place my brain went to. I wanted to make a horror game that required the user to listen. Tying this in to the controller, I wanted to use L2 and R2 for each leg, and then maybe something gyro related? I liked the idea of the player having to raise the controller to hold their breath, but my programming knowledge isn't THAT good, and tutorialsation is something that concerned me... and something I unfortunately forgot about later in development. 

Pretty quickly (thanks to the pressure of time) I decided the idea of the game would be a player trying to get from point A, to point B. And for the first time, I was commiting to the idea of focsuing on the narrative later. I wanted the player to walk through terrain using the triggers, so I could use the HD Rumble to simulate the terrain the player is walking on. On top of this, depending on how fast the player would press the triggers it would change the rumble and noise. I bit too late into planning I had discovered I couldn't actually access the DualSense features without a PS5 Dev Kit. Ultimately my fault, I should have absolutely started my research there. Now the question is... how do I pivot?

Well a few of the ideas were able to survive into generic gamepads. For example I could absolutely still time how long it takes for the player to press each trigger. It's just that a lot of ideas for "feeling" in the controller would just have to become audio. Something that I think DID translate well however, is whenever the player is holding their breath, the controller rumbles in time with the heart beat of the game audio (that took a lot of trial and error).