On this small team, I took on the role of a Game Designer. I was in charge of designing the gameplay loop of the game, as well as the game’s systems. I also wrote and maintained the game design document.

The game jam I designed Planetary Panic for had very few restrictions, only requiring the game to be horror-themed. This made the main challenge of designing the game the time limit, as my team only had one week to fully create this game. I had to come up with a game loop that was simple enough for our programmers to implement, while still being fun and compelling for our players.

I decided that, in order to help reinforce the horror themes, the player should have fear and panic generated through not only the spooky environment and sound effects, but also the gameplay. The team had already decided to reuse the Squimbus, an antagonistic creature from our previous game, Planetary Planter, in order to save on art development time. Initially, we were just going to have the Squimbus chase the player through the hallway for a few minutes, and if the timer ran out, the player won. However, in my opinion, just being chased by a monster wasn’t enough to make our game loop compelling. While scary, it needed something more.

In order to raise the tension, I added the System Repair mechanic into the game loop. As the player was trying to avoid the Squimbus, they also had to keep several important systems repaired. If one of the ship’s systems wasn’t working properly, the ship stopped moving, pausing the timer that would allow the player to escape. The timer would stay paused until the player repaired the system. After adding this system to the game, the gameplay became much more tense, as the player now had to keep multiple plates spinning on top of avoiding a monster.