The Fall 2022 Design Week challenge was to design a game with an alternative control scheme (alt ctrl. for short). We spent the Monday brainstorming design ideas.

I drew up a concept for a game using a lantern as a controller. Players would cover and uncover lights with aluminum foil sensors to spawn/attack ghosts. 

We found several immediate flaws in the idea but the concept was compelling. Our team combined this concept with another for narrative and came up with a design for a game about a lighthouse that warded off sea monsters.

The team worked together to established a basic gameplay loop and flowchart.

Aside from digital technologies, our team also made use of our table's whiteboard quickly sketch concepts and progression diagrams. While the rest of the team was working on the gameplay flowchart, the other half of us created charts for menu/screen flow and ending conditions.

We also drew up diagrams for the controller.

I used sticky notes to flesh out several aspects of the game's design in relation to visuals and aesthetics.

This is one of my early storyboards I created for the tutorial/opening.

Through this short sequence, players would quickly discover the objective of the game and its core mechanics while also being instilled with a sense of horror.

This is another early mockup I did for To Harbor's main menu and controls. One of the challenges was figuring out how a controller that only rotated could be used to select menu options and prompts. We came up with the idea of holding the light over a gauge that slowly filled up to confirm selection.

We later mapped a button for resetting the gyro sensor as a QOL measure but we wanted players to engage with the game using only the rotation action.