Blast Course
Blast Course is a project that originated as an end degree project at U-TAD university which ended up growing far beyond and continued to develop after finishing the degree. We were a team of seven people, four designers, and programmers with three 3D artists, although we had some help with VFX, music, and graphic design. Thanks to all the effort of all the people that worked in the development of the project we finished up with a well-rounded project with a professional look. We have presented this game in gaming festivals like the “Indie Dev Day”, “Guerrilla Game Festival” and “Bilbao International Gaming Conference”
Blast Course is an original game based on the mechanic of “rocket jumping”. The game is inspired by this mechanic to solve puzzles in multiple ways, giving freedom to the player to solve the puzzles in the way they desire. There is also some parkour presented in the levels to make them more diverse which will challenge the ability of the players and their knowledge of the game. There are four different types of rocket that will force the players to use all their rocket types to solve puzzles and advance through the levels.
In “Blast Course” the player plays as Kit, a test dummy for the so-called “The Interesting Company” that needs to try out their new innovative transportation system “HyperBoom”, which consists of shooting rockets at your feet.
The main inspiration of the game is the “Portal” series, so players can expect puzzles based on physics and a narrative based on the environment with the main antagonist talking during the game with the main character.
My Role in the Project
During the development of the game, the roles that I acquired were as a Game Designer and Audio Designer.
As a Game Designer, I was in charge of:
Making the level layouts to show the team the idea I had of the levels.
Making the levels blockouts
Designing the puzzles inside the game
Trying the levels to ensure that we were reaching the desired quality
Paying attention during the playtests to see what works and what not, to change it later
Minor asset implementation to see if the design of the level matched the narrative and the art direction
As an Audio Designer, I was in charge of:
Searching for the audio that our game uses
Edit the audio to match what they represent in the game
Implement them in the game
Test if the audio is well chosen and if it works correctly inside the game
“Blast Course” has taught me a lot about video game development. As this was a big project that had a long development time, I had to learn to work with other people, blending the different creative ideas that each one had on the project. As a designer, I truly understood how game design works and was able to upgrade the quality of the levels thanks to feedback given in playtest and by other members of the team. Thanks to the skills developed during the creation of this game I am ready to develop any other game.
