Transrunner is a 2D game in which two guests collaborate with each other and transform between human, horse, eagle, and dolphin to collect stars in the shortest time possible.
Role: Game Designer/ Sound Designer
Team Size: 5
Development Duration: 2 week
Design Process
System Design
During brainstorming, my team came up with a lot of ideas and settled down on two: transforming + racing. At first, I designed the game to be a racing game where players need to transform into animals to solve certain problems. After several playtests, we found out that the racing part is conflicting with our intention of letting players enjoy the freedom of transforming. I shifted the design to make a world exploring and star collecting game. We did some playtests again, and it turned out that the racing timer may still be needed just to give players a better sense of how can they perform better in this world.
When we first deleted the racing element, we put keys as items to clear the map, and used stars as a collectable item. But when we added the timer back, the existense of keys became very annoying. If we keep it, then in order to clear the map with a shorter time, players will directly collect keys, ignore stars, and finish the level. It conflicts with the intention of letting them explore again. Because of that, we deleted the keys in the final version.
Level Design
For this round, I also worked as the level designer in our team. I designed the levels with two principles. The first is to highlight the collaboration element. I designed most of the trap doors in a way that only guests collaborate may they pass the doors. The second is to make sure that they are not always using a single animal. For that principle, some of the buttons are in the air / water and can only be opend by bird / dolphin. The buttons on the ground can only be triggered by horse. And the lever can only be operated by human. With them, players need to frequently switch back and force to complete the map.
Final Level Design
Implemented in unity with tilemap
Tianyi Cao's Universe 