Coffee Run

Designed by Chalkboard Cosmos.

For PC and Mac

“Fun for all ages, from young adults to young pensioners.” Age Rating: 12+

Shipping Date: TDA

#CoffeeRun

Story & Gameplay Theodore’s background The story begins with our main character, named Theodore. Theodore works night shifts at a firm called ‘NightLife’ a co­operation run by one man, who depends on his coffee in the morning to function, his name; Sir John Fritz. He normally chooses from his employees to get it for him. One monday evening, five minutes before he left for work, Theodore received a text from Sir John Fritzes secretary, informing him to pick up a latte from the Coffee House down the boulevard, with no given extra time, Theodore would be fired if he disobeyed/arrived late. His journey embarks on a series of exaggerated, health and safety hazards downtown. Including a wind tunnel at the beginning, to thrust Theodore upwards, keeping him from knocking over his drink by a crowd of people heading to the CoffeeHouse. When Theodore reaches the middle gateway tunnel, he enters the city life during the night. Although he pursues the same goal, Theodore is faced with more challenging obstacles. The first set includes a broken down crane, dropping many girders. Theodore must wait, then jump from girder to girder, to reach the next building. At the rooftop of the second building, he comes across three 'gravity crates'. He realises that he can't reach his destination without moving the crates in order to create a disfigured, stepping stone path. After they are positioned, Theodore athletically jumps from the first to the second and third, when he finally makes it to his workplace. • Avoid crowd of people. • Reach vent. • make it to first building. • Make it through girders. • Approach second building. • Push and position Gravity Crates. • Jump from one crate to another. • You have completed the level.

Game Flow We want our game flow to be very intense, challengeable and repetitive. We also want the game to be described as beautiful and as realistic as possible so the player would feel pride in the game. The game flow is about a little character called Theodore, who explores a big city like NY. He starts of leaving the coffee house, with his coffee cup through the city itself before getting towards ‘nightlife’ building, which is his work, and where his boss expects the cup of coffee. The key through your journey is to avoid crowds of people and not to fall off cranes or broken buildings or you will die and have to start all over again. During the daytime city, it will look very cheerful and the bright colours will put you in a positive mood to win the game. The use of weapons in the game may be hard to find, because they are more like an escape route. You wouldn’t think they are weapons at first, however they do help you get away from the enemies. For example at the start of coffee run game you will see a crowed of people and the weapon is invisible, however moving your character forward you will come across an air vent just under the crane. If you move the character onto the air vent once found, it will take you up to the cranes. Once you completed going through the first journey during the daytime of coffee run, you will come by a broken glass building, which will have a warning sign appeared to tell you that below is a long drop. You must not fall or you will die and have to start over, so the player will have pre­caution and understand the element of the game as you can see on the right a picture of our warning sign. We haven’t considered a score just a character gaining skills and exploring new abilities to cross over buildings. The only score is getting to the finish line. Theodore then has to wait till you see floating gravity girders traveling downwards. You will then have to get your timing right and use the keys to get Theodore across until you see the nearest building. Overall the game depends on his coffee in the morning to safely cross till he gets to Nightlife building and that’s where his boss will be waiting for his cup of coffee. Before you see the spectacular Nightlife building, the real challenge begins when you come by a pile of crates before you. The fun then begins and the game will test out your concentration skills and your creativity on how you can get across safely without falling just before the finish line.

Characters & Controls Coffee run is a game based on one coffee, one journey. The player controls the character of Theodore. A hipster, young adult that works night shifts. As the player, your job is to take control of Theodore and help him bring his boss a cup of coffee. This however, is easier said than done.

The player must use the arrow keys and the spacebar to influence Theodore's movements; run forwards, backwards and jump. He must avoiding any potential hazards. These vary from construction sites, to crowds of people or even just falling from tall buildings.

The character Theodore is the only fully commandable Actor during gameplay. With just using his basic ability to move and push against other actors, you can reach high levels and move gravity crates in order to create new pathways for your character. This is very important for the game to include, it gives the player a feeling of total control over his character, with a sense of freedom, allowing him to choose what he does with objects. The player has not been given a time limit to complete his game, purely for the amusement. The color, music and the overall design of the game has been described to be quite beautiful, and so it was in our best interest to not rush the player, and give them the time and ease to appreciate the game for what it is. The controls responsible for Theodore’s movement and interaction with other actors, are the eight rules shown in the picture. Most are straightforward, for example: the collide behaviour was added to Theodore so that he could bounce away from any actor with a given tag. The collide behaviour becomes useful when creating a surface that an actor could bounce from, like a trampoline, then you also have access to the trampolines physics elements, allowing you to change the bounciness. I am mentioning this because, halfway through the gameplay, Theodore approaches some falling girders that have the same behaviour, allowing Theodore to jump from one to another.

The ‘move rules’ are basic commands, simply changing the attributes once or twice per movement and a reserve, so if the forward arrow on the keyboard isn’t ‘down’ then the ‘don’t move’ rule is applied in default. This is very important to the characters movement appearance once the animation is include, because not only is it easier to find where to place the animation in the rules, it also corresponds with it’s change, each time a different button is pressed.

Main Gameplay Concepts & Platform Specific Features

The type of gameplay that the player encounters is simple ʻMarioʼ style. You can only move Up, Down, Left and Right. As expected, you can also jump using the space bar. We wanted the controls to be as simple as possible because the art in the game is quite detailed and we didnʼt want to over complicate the game. The genre of the game is a platformer. Our character ʻTheodoreʼ travels through the city, avoiding various obstacles which could endanger his precious coffee. At the moment we only have one level, but the intention was to create extra levels with different artwork to represent different parts of the city. The extra levels would also increase in difficulty as you progress. The unique selling points of the game would be the challenge of not spilling your coffee and the extra detail in the artwork. As a platform game and a running game, it plays like a hybrid of Super Mario and Temple Run. From the beginning, we wanted a coffee cup to be present in the game. Either as a loading bar or a status bar for the coffee. We achieved this in the end as a rotating loading graphic.

The game was initially designed for the Ipad but after adding so much artwork to the game, we decided that the colours and extra details would be better enjoyed on a bigger screen ­ hence the game being set for PC and Mac. The bigger screen also allows you to see where youʼre heading with your coffee, rather than playing a game which hinders your viewing experience on a small screen.

Gameworld

The gameplay takes place in a fiction world which is driven by coffee. If you think Starbucks is bright now, imagine todayʼsworld x10. Theodore needs to get his coffee to his boss who works across the other side of the city. His journey begins at the sweet Coffeehouse At The start of the game. Itʼs still light in the city but the light is fading and the sky is fading from blue to orange. Theo must get to work as soon as possible but mustnʼt drink his coffee. He avoids crowds of people and scrambles across building sites and through tall buildings to get to ʻNightLifeʼ across the other side. ʻNightLifeʼ is a media company and they work all night, hence the bosses need for his caffeine fix. The challenges he encounters along his route, are exaggerated versions of what you might find on a tough commute to work.. The change from dusk to night is supposed to reflect the calm mood of the day that transforms into the stress and panic of the night, especially when you have a deadline to reach. Below is a gameplay flowchart of the stages you encounter and the options youʼre given.

Coffee Run has a linear navigation because youʼre always moving forwards,and you canʼt ever resort back to a previous point in the game. Once youʼve left the coffee house, youʼre not going to progress in the game unless youʼre moving forwards.

Interface Like every platformer game, the player cannot see the whole map during gameplay. He or she can only see as far as the character’s camera allows them. In our game CoffeeRun, in order for the player to see what the map consists of ahead, he or she must maneuver Theodore to either to the side of the screen to display different parts of the map. The music is a soothing and peaceful song that we selected for the game, right after we created the paper prototype. The fact that it fits with the world of CoffeeRun so well, improves the experience for the player. The odd tune’s collaborate well with the make believe world and compliment the overall design. Podington bear’s soundtrack became the song for our game, immediately after we heard it. The idea of coffee run was to create a different interface where the player, could start the game with a peaceful mindset allowing them to easily adapt to the controls. This heavily depended on the atmosphere of the game being bright and easy at first. Then, to introduce new challenges, a dark side was literally created within the game. A juxtaposition of the ‘pretty opening’ We called this, The City Nightlife.

The ‘dark side’ is not only a change in color scheme, but is where challenges become more daunting and very intriguing for the player, which also includes some surprising elements that are unlikely to be found in any other game. The next page shows a Simple Flow chart demonstrating how the player navigates the interface.

Mechanics & Power Ups

A mechanic we have used would be the air vent as you can see above in the picture. The air vent was an unusual idea, however is great because it makes the little guy float up onto the crates away from the enemies. We feel it’s a great way to get the players interested and I liked how we thought out of the box, than using a boring staircase, which was our original idea. We also used our song choice as the sound effects when Theodore dies, the reason is because we want to let the player know what has happened to Theodore and we done this by having a spilt coffee cup appear when he dies, then you have to start over again. Finally the best mechanic I feel we have created would be the crates. They are a great idea to get the character to move them and jump across in a unique way each time, but the fun really starts when the crates break apart from each other so the character has to quickly get across. The mechanics were easy to think of, on the technical side because there are fewer rules and behaviours integrated for their movement so it was easier. The crates also link in really well with the city theme and I am pleased they work efficiently throughout the game. Unfortunately we didn’t include any power ups, because we concentrated on the mechanic side and wanted the coffee run game to be more like a traditional obstacle course, with a prize at the end.

Our Replacement of Enemies The player will face no traditional enemies throughout the Coffee Run game. Just obstacles and nuances. the first step is to avoid a crowed of people at the start and they are considered enemies because if you touch them you will die and have to go back to the start. The interesting tactics of the Enemies is that they don’t look evil, they are just dressed casual for work, so they blend in with the whole city theme and I believe with them there its gains more thrill, of the unexpected and not realizing they are your enemy.

The obstacles above carry the same satisfaction of any other gameplay that may include actual enemies. The obstacles were chosen over having enemies because they fit into the story of our character, and didn’t need an introduction. There are plenty of benefits of having obstacles instead. One of the benefits of the obstacles is that the player can choose how to approach the obstacle, free from worry of attacks. Another benefit would be that the player can also use some obstacles as tools to create paths or to transport themselves. Each obstacle has it’s own challenge, for example the crates fall apart as you cross over them and the challenge is to quickly jump across to get to the finish line before they break apart, if you fail, Theodore falls and the player is given the chance to try again or return to the menu. This is a great replacement of ‘Enemies’ because it adds more free will and pressure to plan - and then win. The only boss we have considered would be Theodore actual work boss who expects the coffee at the finish line, on top of the nightlife building.

Cut Scenes, Bonus Material and Comp Our game doesnʼt have any cutscenes or competitions, but we do have possible bonus material. The game currently only has one level, but we want a more advanced version of the game to have as many as four levels. Each level presents a different cityscape, with a progressively harder difficulty level. The levels are locked at the beginning of the game so that you can get used to the game on an easy level. We also considered the idea of having the future levels as something you would have to purchase.

If the game was particularly successful, we would like to join forces with a real world coffee brand such as Starbucks or Costa ­ so that the game could be used for promotional purposes. If you buy a Coffee Run coffee in one of their stores, youʼre given a code to play the game online. This code would only get players of be enticed again.