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About
About
Game Engine: Unity
3D Models: Blender Software
Textures: Substance Painter
2D Art: Photoshop
Overview
Rubber Rescue is a unqiue controller prototype that me and 4 other developers made in 2024. Its a 4 player co-op game in which everyone works together to save your rubber duckies in the bathtub and bring them all back to safety. The twist is that everyone has to use their voices in order to control the mother Duckling.
There are 4 mircophones used as controllers and they all represent a direction the mother duck can go. Players must work together in order to complete their mission and make their voices heard!
Contributions
I was the level designer, gameplay designer, 3D Artist and technical Artist on this project. My duties included:
Designing and modelling the bathtub level for the duck to swim in.
Making key design decisions such as how the duck will move and how everything behaves around the microphone movement.
Designing and modelling the obstacles players would have to face.
Creating the toon water shader in the game.
Level Design
Level Design
Designing around the Microphones
For Rubber Rescue I had to design the main level around the 4 microphone movement system. The most intelligent way I designed it was around a bathtub with distinctive landmarks that help players know where they are on the map. As players have to work together, we as a team designed obstacles for players to avoid alongside having to keep their ducklings together and safe.
The goal of the game is for players to work together to collect as many ducklings as possible until they eventually run out of lives. As the game is light-hearted there is music that also helps players know when they are near base. Players spawn near the base as a way of knowing that's where the baby ducks have to go.
Rubber Rescue live gameplay
Gameplay Design
Gameplay Design
Microphone Gameplay
The unqiue mircophone gameplay is the unique selling point of rubber rescue and is what draws players to the game. It works by having four players (each with a rubber ducky mircophone of a distinctive colour) shout into their mircophone to have the duck move a direction.
By having the duck move at a lerped 45 degree angle, (to make it feel more natural) players must work together to collect their rubber ducklings before they run out of lives. While the game is cartoony we wanted the ducks movement to feel realistic and satisfying to control (similar to the cars in Mario Kart). The game is about communication and working together to get a task done. There are no buttons or keyboards only the power of voice.
The players have to avoid enemies and traps such as toy sharks that hone in on the player. The louder a player shouts the faster the duck will move. During playtesting I played in both debug mode (keyboard controls) and microphone mode to test mechanics and the games level design. I helped design the microphone system and did rigorous playtesting alongside the main programmer.
Mircophone gameplay
3D Art
3D Art
Cartoon Family Friendly Style
Rubber Rescue is a game created for people of all ages. It is the easiest game to pick up and play that I have ever worked on. We wanted the games art style to reflect that so we went for a toon shaded style with mostly solid colours.
I worked on creating the obstacle models, environment art, the toon shader and the water shader for Rubber Rescue. For both the toon water shader and the regular toon shader I used the Unity Shader graph and replicated the style of the Legend of Zelda Windwaker to have an old school Nintendo style.
The cel shading was done by replacing the realistic default unity lighting gradients with simplier discrete bands of colour using a step function.
All the models in the game have a low poly style (for performance) and all have a toon shader on them with custom texture support too. This is so other 3D artists could use their textures on the materials.
Toon Water Shader and Models
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