Goose Game :
Game Development

A UW-themed side scroller game where the player controls a constantly moving goose, pooping on students to earn points, while walking and flying to avoid obstacles. Target user are mainly toward UW students and teachers.

Wireframe

Game difficulty variation

Our intention and objectives for "Goose Game" are centred around providing an engaging and fun experience for our target users, mainly University of Waterloo students and staff. We aim to make our game concept clear and intuitive.

● In the First Round: We expected the users to control the goose to fly by pressing the spacebar.

● In the Fifth Round: we hope users learn to make the goose poop and avoid dying by practicing flying and avoiding obstacles.

● For the Subsequent Rounds: we expected users to get familiar with the game, aiming to earn more points by pooping on students and beating their previous scores.

Game play experience and issues of interface

During the play testing phase, I encountered some design problems that could impact the gaming experience.

Feedback from playtest

"Huh? Why did I die?"

Flying obstacles were hard

to see against the background

The first Issue could be the Visibility of Obstacles

● Problem: Users couldn't see the quadcopter against the building background, which led

to frequent collisions and frustration.

● Solution: I proposed some solutions and finally solved the problem. Initially, I made the

quadcopter larger, but this increased the game's difficulty. Instead, I reduced the size of

the obstacles and changed the colour of the quadcopter to contrast with the background,

making it more visible. This adjustment helped balance the perceived difficulty of the

game.

During play-test, users reported there is lack of gameplay guidance and not knowing the functional key for the certain ability in game. Which makes it difficult to play and impacting the game experience.

Feedback from playtest

"I don't know what keys to press"

Players couldn't figure out

the control for pooping

The second problem was the Tutorial Accessibility

● Problem: After adding a tutorial screen in the second iteration, players struggled to remember the pooping control. They couldn't access the tutorial after starting the game and had to spam the keyboard to find the control, leading to frustration.

● Solution: To solve this, I added the tutorial button to the game over screen, where user scan access the tutorial. I also updated the button to say "Help" to make it more noticeable.

Before: Instruction sign were not clear