Documentation

Project Progression Summary

The development of ’Regime Shift’ progressed through several clear phases:

  1. Concept Formulation (Already established before project start)
    • Defined core metaphor of tilting hemisphere as ecological balance
  2. Conceptual Exploration and Refinement (January)
    • Defined cyclical ecosystem with Critters and Plants
    • Designed hemisphere with biotope system
    • Developed mechanics for ecosystem balance
  3. Initial Prototype Development (Late January - Early February)
    • Tested physics-based tilting mechanics
    • Implemented basic weight distribution system
    • Validated the core physical metaphor
  4. System Design Development (February)
    • Evolved resource system with Critters and Plants
    • Created character needs and object interactions
    • Established vertical building concept
  5. Mechanics Finalization and Tool Development (Early March)
    • Refined core gameplay loops
    • Integrated metaphorical elements with mechanics
    • Created custom scene documentation tooling
    • Defined ending conditions and player objectives
  6. Second Prototype Implementation (Early March)
    • Developed functional ecosystem with complete cycle
    • Created custom assets for plants, soil, and houses
    • Implemented building and resource management systems
    • Demonstrated complete gameplay loop
  7. Documentation (Final days)
    • Created comprehensive Game Design Document
    • Established foundation for continued development

Throughout this progression, the central ecological metaphor remained consistent, while the gameplay systems evolved from simple physics demonstrations to a complex, interconnected ecosystem simulation.

Starting Concept

The project began with an initial concept as outlined in the ’Concept Idea for the Orientation Project’. The core concept was already established:

This initial concept provided the metaphorical framework that would guide the entire development process. The hemisphere’s physical tilting would directly reflect ecological imbalance, creating a tangible representation of sustainability challenges.

Initial Concept Exploration

Core Questions Explored

First Solution: Ecosystem as a Cycle

The first solution was to represent the ecosystem as a cycle. Technically, the world is conceived as a voxel world with two types of resources:

  1. Static Resources (don’t move across the playing field)
    • Trees/Wood
    • Soil/Clay
    • Flowers/Hay
  2. Dynamic Resources (move in a circular pattern across the playing field)
    • Initially water, later changed to insect-like creatures called ’Critters’

In this system, static resources transform dynamic resources:

Example: Water (dynamic resource) is transformed by trees (static resource): River flows into forest → Trees absorb water and evaporate into clouds → Clouds drift to moor and rain down → Precipitation becomes fog and moves to meadow → Fog creates river → River flows into forest…

Advantages:

Resulting Mechanics:

  1. Player removes trees to build (e.g., a house)
  2. Fewer trees means less capacity to transform river to clouds
  3. Congestion occurs (flooding), more voxels in one place than elsewhere
  4. The hemisphere begins to tilt

This supports the metaphor by showing how removing/destroying parts of the ecosystem causes the hemisphere to tilt.

Hemisphere Design

The hemisphere was designed to be divided into three sections like pie slices. Each section would grow a specific plant species, representing a biotope. Critters would need pollen from plants in a specific sequence, requiring them to move from Plant A to Plant B to Plant C and back to Plant A, creating circular movement across the hemisphere.

When a plant is harvested, the soil becomes free and can be fertilized by a Critter for new plant growth. Plants and Critters create a circularly moving ecosystem. Houses can be built on the hemisphere but take away plant space. To regulate this, vertical building allows house roofs to be used for planting. Houses can also be built on plants, creating a multi-story habitat for fauna, flora, and humans. Biotopes remain consistent vertically - if a house is in a specific biotope, only the plant belonging to that biotope can grow on its roof.

Initial Prototype Development

First Prototype Screenshot

After establishing the conceptual foundation, the first prototype was developed to test the balance mechanics. This simple implementation included:

The scene hierarchy was structured with:

This prototype focused on testing whether the physical metaphor could be effectively implemented and if it created interesting gameplay dynamics.

Ecosystem Refinement

Resource System Adaptation

After consideration, I decided to replace water with bee-like insects called ’Critters’ as the dynamic resource. The static resources were changed to three different plant species living in symbiosis with the Critters.

Plant Properties:

Critter Properties:

Soil Properties:

Character System Design

Initial character concept:

Basic Needs:

Object System Development

Fundamental objects:

Diagram of the game objects

Diagram of the game objects

Concept Refinement

Feedback from Carla Heinzel provided a crucial opportunity to streamline the previous concept. Together, we defined a clear motivation for implementing the game: making the ecological metaphor playable. Using this motivation as our guiding principle, we systematically evaluated every game mechanic to ensure it served this core purpose.

Revised Game Description

At the beginning of the game, a society of humans exists in a lush landscape. Flora and fauna thrive, soil is fertile, and the world is in ecological balance. Humans live in this functioning system, but their basic needs must be met to survive. As the architect of this world, the player shapes society’s development and its impact on nature.

The world exists on the flat side of a hemisphere - a living metaphor for our ecosystem. The hemisphere’s tilt directly reflects how much the natural balance is disturbed. When the player interferes with flora and fauna to meet human needs, the effects are immediately visible in the world’s stability.

To enable sustainable development, the player must find creative ways to use limited space optimally. As the population grows, demands on the system increase. Vertical development creates new living space for humans and nature - but the higher it’s built, the more fragile the balance becomes as the center of gravity shifts upward.

’Regime Shift’ is an interactive experience of the delicate balance between human development and nature. The player becomes the designer of a symbiosis where human needs must be met in harmony with the ecosystem. The goal is to develop a stable society that exists in balance with its environment - because only when both systems are balanced can the world remain stable.

Game Mechanics Finalization

1. Congestion Mechanic

The ecosystem on the hemisphere functions as a cycle. Interrupting this cycle by removing plants creates congestion as Critters must wait to proceed. This concentrates more mass in one area, causing the hemisphere to tilt.

2. Movement Mechanic

Harvesting plants uniformly across the hemisphere avoids congestion but slows Critter movement as they wait for pollen everywhere. The ecosystem moves more slowly, regenerating more slowly as Critters take longer to fertilize soil. This eventually leads to resource depletion, unfulfilled human needs, and game loss.

3. Biotope Mechanic

The specific biotopes where plants can grow (including vertically) ensure a continuous Critter cycle and circular ecosystem movement.

4. Critter Population Mechanic

The number of Critters dynamically grows with the number of plants, ensuring fauna adapts to flora.

5. Human AI

Humans move independently across the playing field. When needs are met, they multiply; when needs aren’t met, population decreases.

6. Critter AI

Critters always seek the nearest destination. When approaching a biotope with unfertilized soil, they fertilize it first before flying to a plant to wait for pollen.

Custom Development Tool

Scene Hierarchy Printer

To streamline the development process, I created a custom Unity Editor tool called ’SceneHierarchyPrinter.’ This utility allows for quick export of scene hierarchies, component details, and script contents from Unity directly to text format.

The tool was specifically designed to facilitate communication with AI systems like Claude and ChatGPT, making it easier to get contextual understanding and feedback on the project structure. Key features include:

This specialized tool helped me during the second prototype development phase, allowing me to quickly document complex scene structures and share them to AI assistants for technical feedback and troubleshooting.

Game Ending Conditions

The game can end in two ways:

At game end, statistics become viewable, including humans born and died, game duration, construction amount, and overall system stability. These statistics create basis for challenges.

This prototype had a more complex scene hierarchy, including:

Key components implemented:

This prototype demonstrated the core ecosystem cycle and building mechanics, validating the central gameplay loop of harvesting resources, building structures, and maintaining ecological balance.

Second Prototype Development

Second Prototype Screenshot

Based on the refined concept, a second, more sophisticated prototype was developed. This prototype was designed to test:

For this prototype, I created custom assets including:

Game design Objects

These custom-designed assets helped visualize the different biotope elements and allowed for clearer distinction between the plant types in each ecosystem zone.

Final Documentation and Game Design Document

As the culmination of the project, a comprehensive Game Design Document was created to formalize the concepts developed throughout the process. This document:

  1. Articulates the complete vision of ’Regime Shift’
  2. Defines all game elements and their interactions in detail
  3. Outlines the metaphorical relationship between gameplay and ecological themes
  4. Specifies technical requirements and architecture
  5. Maps potential for future development

The GDD synthesizes all insights gained from the conceptual exploration and prototype development, providing a solid foundation for future development beyond this initial phase.

View Game Design Document →

Project Assessment and Reflection

Overall, I believe the project didn’t fully achieve its intended goals. This assessment was confirmed by feedback from Carla Heinzel, who suggested I should look for a different metaphor since the gameplay feels like ’a workaround to make the metaphor function.’ I understand this criticism as I feel the same way about certain aspects of the project.

The core problem lies in the fact that we’re playing with a ’real ecosystem’ of flora and fauna while using it to benefit humans. However, the metaphor focuses on weight distribution, which doesn’t naturally align with how ecosystems function. This creates a gap where we must find ways to preserve the metaphor while keeping the ecosystem playable. While this works to some extent, it relies more on workarounds than on a thoroughly conceived concept.

Another challenge identified during this process relates to funding opportunities for game development. I found that most grant programs for games require developers to cover 50% of the costs themselves, which creates a significant barrier to entry for independent developers. A more accessible model would follow the Prototype Fund approach, which provides a set investment amount upfront to kickstart development without requiring matching funds. This financial aspect is an important consideration for the project’s future development beyond the prototype phase.

In my assessment, the metaphor itself functions well, but the gameplay mechanics surrounding the ecosystem don’t quite reach the same level of cohesion and intuitive design.

Learnings and Technical Development

This project provided valuable learning experiences across multiple dimensions of game development:

Programming in C

Working with C# proved to be a particularly enjoyable experience. Unlike TypeScript, where types themselves often become problematic, C#’s integrated type system felt natural and streamlined the development process. The strong typing helped catch errors early in development, reducing debugging time and improving code reliability.

Design Patterns and Architecture

The project allowed me to experiment with various programming patterns, most notably:

Understanding which components should depend on others and how they should communicate required careful planning, especially when designing the ecosystem interactions between plants, critters, and the environment.

Unity Development

Unity’s development environment proved remarkably efficient for rapid prototyping. The ability to quickly test ideas, modify components, and visualize changes in real-time accelerated the development process. The visual editor combined with programmatic control created a powerful workflow for implementing and refining game mechanics.

Game System Design

Designing interconnected game systems presented unique challenges, particularly when balancing complexity with playability. The process of translating conceptual ideas into functioning mechanics required multiple iterations and rethinking of approaches.

Future Development Approach

For future projects, I would focus on creating more streamlined game systems with simpler, more intuitive mechanics. I’ve learned that a well-executed simple system can be just as engaging and meaningful as a complex one, while being easier to implement and refine. Reducing scope and focusing on core gameplay experiences would likely yield better results within similar time constraints.

Reflection on Development Goals and Timeline

Minimal Viable Product vs. Best-Case Scenario

Looking back at my initial goals for the project, I believe I achieved something closer to the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) rather than the best-case scenario I had initially envisioned. The reasons for this are largely outlined in the Project Assessment and Reflection section above.

From a technical perspective, I accomplished my learning objectives related to Unity and C# development. I’ve reached a point where I can accurately assess what is feasible to implement within Unity given specific time constraints. The experience has provided valuable insights into the development pipeline and resource requirements for different game features.

Conceptually, I developed the game idea as thoroughly as possible given the constraints. The core metaphor and gameplay mechanics were fully defined, even if the integration between them wasn’t as seamless as desired. The prototype demonstrates the fundamental concepts, though it would require further refinement to achieve the best-case scenario originally planned.

Original Work Plan and Timeline

Throughout the development process, I made several adjustments to my original work plan based on emerging circumstances and discoveries. I spent more time on conceptual development than initially planned, as I continued searching for a more elegant solution to integrate the ecological metaphor with engaging gameplay. This extended concept phase was a deliberate choice, as I believed that finding the right conceptual foundation was crucial for the project’s success.

While the technical implementation progressed relatively smoothly, the conceptual challenges required more exploration and refinement than anticipated. These adjustments were necessary to ensure that at least a minimal viable product with a coherent conceptual framework could be completed within the project timeframe.

Despite these adjustments, the core milestones were maintained, though their scope and implementation details evolved throughout the process. This flexibility was essential for adapting to technical constraints and conceptual refinements that emerged during development.