Circuit Breakout: Dual Polarity
Third Person Story Based Puzzle Game
Circuit Breakout: Dual Polarity was made as my final project for my capstone year in Sheridan's Bachelor of Game Design program. In it, you play as two characters, Data, a cyborg sister with rocket arms, and Surge, a little boy entirely of electricity. Using both characters together, the player must solve puzzles to escape an abandoned facility.
We had only 6 members on our team, so I wore a lot of hats. During the course of this project, I worked as the: Lead Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Project Manager, Level Designer, and Playtest Coordinator.
Creating Circuit Breakout
For our final capstone project, we wanted to make something ambitious. We had two semesters to go from pre-production to the end of production before showing our game live at events like Level Up and the XP Game Summit! So as a team, we deliberated long and hard through many ideas, finally settling on making a puzzle game where you must actively use two characters simultaneously.
Our Core Themes
I worked with our lead game designer, Tiago Massochin, to establish our core themes for the game. Considering the direction I had taken for our narrative, we wanted to focus on establishing the physical and symbolic use of bridging gaps. The player must bridge gaps with bridges, mend connections in wires, and bring both characters back together by the end of each puzzle, creating a game loop that represents the sibling's journey to mend their broken relationship as they escape their derelict prison.
The Primary Gameplay Loop
We knew we wanted to make a puzzle game, and with our unique ideas for mechanics that rely on two characters, we began to forge our primary gameplay loop. The two characters split apart at the beginning of each level, providing unique perspectives on puzzle elements. Then the player swaps between characters to experiment with what's provided to them, eventually coming up with a solution and reuniting the two characters before moving on.
BIG Challenges
Working in such a small team with limited resources, a tight deadline, extra school work, and other outside variables as a result of the decline of the pandemic, it would suffice to say that we had taken on a beast of a project for our capstone year. This forced me to push myself as a project manager, among my other roles, going over constant risk assessment, schedule adjustments, numerous roadmaps, and many spontaneous meetings. However, with our combined efforts we pushed through and created a game we are truly proud of.
Early Concepts
When I was tasked as a narrative designer, there were two concepts I already had in mind from my hobbies. Here are some sketches of the early concepts for Data, Surge, and Surge's battery pack that I had done to help our main concept and game artist Wilson Chan.
A Story of Mending Broken Connections
The game's story is based on the premise of feeling distant or removed from another person close to you. Being away for a long time, being far older than a sibling, or maybe having cut ties altogether just to find each other once more. Because of this disconnect in your understanding of each other, the relationship feels fragmented or lost. That's what I wanted our players to realize about the siblings in Circuit Breakout.
Synopsis
Data and Surge were born inside a secret testing facility, where they were raised under the belief that their inhumane differences were normal. Data was born 10 years before Surge, and she experienced a different life than him. The two only ever saw each other in photos and never spoke to one another as they were kept in separate parts of the facility, a physical boundary that prevented them from bonding as siblings. After Surge had reached the age of 3, the facility was discovered and raided allowing all the test subjects to escape. All except for Surge, who because of his electric body, could not leave the confines of his battery cell. After 6 years Data returns home to save her brother, the only true family she has left. After the two reunite, they must work together to ascend the derelict confines of the compound as the overseeing warden of the facility tears down more to slow their escape. During their journey, they clash, Data's controlling tendencies irritated by Surge's innate childlike desire to explore and separate. At the game's end, the two learn more about each other and forge a new sibling bond as they move onto a new life in the real world.
My Inspiration
The game's primary themes and message came from my own experiences with my little brother. Being born 10 years after me, we grew up in different generations with different technology. By the time he was old enough to enjoy the things I did as a kid, I had moved out to study game design, and thus I was absent during a time I would've liked to have spent with him. I continue on a journey to forge a stronger relationship with him, as a friend and as an older brother. Using these emotions and experiences, I crafted the story of our game with passion.
Narrative Documents
Below is the narrative design document (NDD) that I made at the beginning of production. The document covers the full extent of the backstory behind everything, including the characters, location, and history of the game world. Storyboards for cut scenes that we lost the time to make can also be found here! Unfortunately, because of time and resource constraints, this extra writing was never fully implemented into the game.
Level Design
Early Maps
To make such a big project possible, many of us had to work on designing, testing, and populating the game's 16 levels. These are some simple maps that lay out the two floors I was responsible for.
Level Design
Circuit Breakout went through multiple iterations when it comes to its level design. Time, resources, and playtesting all provided information that led us to drastically change our original plans, and create the focused path of continuous levels we have now.
Split Paths
The game was originally going to have split paths!?! We had hoped to give our players an experience where their decisions mattered in the sense that they changed the way you would explore the game world. There were ideas for allowing the player to return to previous levels to find secrets and bonuses after unlocking new mechanics, but after doing our rapid prototyping we started to shave off some of these extra features and ideas to ensure our primary puzzle solving experience was as polished as possible.
