Chill Joy is an on-rail shooter, in which the player controls a futuristic flying ice cream machine that they use to fight back against Aliens that are made of ice cream. Chill Joy is made with an arcade feel in mind, what that means is the gameplay features a simple loop of destroying enemies, getting points, increasing combo score, and surviving for as long as possible, then jumping right back into gameplay. The player will have access to three unique ways to defend your home, each with their own ultimate ability!
For starters, Chill Joy was developed across the months of January - May of 2024. My role among the 8 people behind its development was Level / Narrative Design & Lead QA. Early on in the devleopment process we had to develop core design philosophies to help keep a condensed and limited world feel alive and evolving.
The intent of this level design structuring is to give the player a familiar and uncanny feeling when interacting with the environment. While the basic structuring and organization of structures may look familiar to what is seen, the detailing and specifics of each area is meant to feel unfamiliar and have an uncanny resemblance to what the player may be used to seeing.
Narration and barks would be changing depending on current player states and how they are interacting with the world. There are 2 different forms of narration and barks, one being directly from the player character interacting with the world as a reaction. While the other is in the form of player feedback when having successful interactions to have more of an impact on the players experience than narrative immersion.
So how exactly are these elements separated? In the physcial manner, none of the narrative content has any direct reference to events that are directly related to the level. While in comparison the content within the level has pieces of art and structured elements that feed into the overarching story of an ice-cream alien apocalypse. To guide the player through this structured experience, I created unique spline tracks that allow for the player to experience all that is offered.
To help the player fully appreciate the small world they are playing in, the spline tracks are adjusted to fly through areas of interest while not disturbing gameplay. This means the players forward moving direction and rotation were pretetermiend to help amplify an action-packed experience, while minimizing on motion sickness and other visual disturbances.