Hooked! A Tower Crane Game
Role: Game Designer at Simcoach Games
Built by a team of 4 in 4 months
Available for download for at the iOS App Store, the Amazon App Store, and the Google Play Store
Hooked! is a a mobile title created for the Construction Association of Western Pennsylvania with the intention of serving as a recruitment tool for high school students interested in a future career in construction.
My responsibilities included:
- Drafting the initial design document and periodically updating it throughout development
- Designing the rank up and progressions system
- Greyboxing levels
- Gathering and implementing playtest feedback
Awards and Press
Design Postmortem
Throughout development, Hooked! towed an interesting line between between realism and arcadey stylization. The goal of the experience was to excite teens and twenty somethings about the possibility of becoming a crane operator. The team had many discussions about how much we should push in either direction. During preproduction the game (as described in design document and visualized in concept art) leaned more heavily toward the sim side. The lead designer and artist of the project actually went to the Construction Association of Western PA's training facility and got some hands on time operating a tower crane. They reported that the real-life controls for hoisting the hook upwards or downwards were responsive, but that there was a noticeable delay swinging the crane boom left or right. Also hoist controls are reversed (pressing down makes the hook go up and vice versa.)
We decided that our game should reflect the idiosyncrasies of real crane control, both to accurately reflect the mechanics of crane operation to our player base, and because we thought it might be a distinguishing feature of our game. We wanted the movement of the crane to have heft and impart a sense of size and weight to the player. When we playtested the experience it turned out that neither of these ideas resonated with players. It was clear the controls were a barrier to fun. We ultimately decided to make the controls snappier and intuitive (pressing up caused the hook to hoist upward). This change happened relatively late in development. I think if this decision was made earlier, it could have informed other development choices.
There are essentially 3 phases in Hooked!'s gameplay (1. Navigating the hook to the load and lifting it, 2. Rotating the crane andmoving the load 3. Lowering the load onto the destination point). While the player has to carfully maneuver around obstacles while raising or lowering the load, one of the biggest design flaws of the Hooked! is that there is very little challenge or stimulation that occurs after the player lifts the load and is moving it toward its target destination. Oftentimes this phase of the game feels like busy work. One way that we could have rectified this was with airborne obstacles. Navigating around helicopters or flocks of birds would have made this part of the game a spike in the game's interest curve.
