Neon Harbor Jetski Force is a synth wave styled, high speed, arcade style, runner game where you play as a new recruit on the Jetski Force in the town of Neon Harbor. You are chasing after a criminal who has just robbed a bank! As an officer, your duty is to recover as much stolen money as you can and catch the crook! This was a game made for all audiences as a part of Bradley University’s Fuse 2024. Players would try their best to collect as much money as possible using our specialized jet ski handlebar controller and compete for the highest score.
This game was made for Bradley’s annual event, Fuse 2024, in my Junior year. I served as the project’s UI/UX Lead, managing the design and creation of the in-game UI, various art assets, overseeing for implementation, and communication between art, design, and programing.
As usual for a Fuse project, we were given a time limit of one semester to make this project. It was required to last for a maximum of 90 seconds as a novelty experience for people to play at the event.
My team consisted of 18 people ranging from freshmen to juniors, with a freshman game designer assigned to work with me on the UI of the game.
With this being my 3rd year a part of Fuse, I knew exactly how to begin my process; I started researching and creating a competitive analysis. With the early phase of the project upon us and my lack of experience with racing and runner games, I knew it was important to look into the industry and see what were the commonalities in the UI of those genres of games.
I observed stylistic differences, staples of the genres, UI design, game flow, and more. I wanted to make sure that I had a proper understanding of how this game should work and feel to those both experienced and not with the genre.
After my research, I began drafting various in-game UI on a nearby whiteboard, covering potential main menus, design and placement of a speedometer, score, multiplier, and the game’s results screen. After various iterations of hand drawn sketches, I began digitizing my concepts and creating 2D hand drawn concept art.
These early phases were a massive treat thanks to the talented people I had on my team. My producer as well as the entire art team had such a strong clear vision for the game - its mechanics, the aesthetic, the tone - that it made this entire early planning phase a breeze.
That said, once spring came and the planning and concept phase was concluded, it was time to make real assets. Since I had team members to help me, it was surprisingly easy to divide up the work. While I would focus on the creation of high-profile art assets, I assigned and monitored other team members while they focused on collecting fonts, creating the art assets for the score multiplier, and making smaller assets found in the ending sequence.
This aspect of my job was very satisfying! At the start, they didn’t have much confidence in their art/UI abilities. However, over the course of the project, they really started to find their groove and make some great work! Any time they had questions, I would do my best to teach them the software, give them advice on what could be improved, and encourage them throughout the process. It was great seeing them develop and, by the end, they really came into their own!
When it came to creating art assets, it was an interesting balance act. I was in constant communication with the art team and programming on implementation, visual consistency, proper sizing, etc. My days would often go between working with the art team to create a new asset, making sure it falls in line with the game's visual style and color palette, and testing it for readability and usability. From there, my conversation would bounce to working with programming, making sure the assets were the proper size, that all the pieces (e.g. the speedometer) were separated for ease of animating and coding, that there was proper placement on screen and prototyping worked properly. Honestly, working with a team as large as ours for the first time, this constant back and forth of various hats I had to wear was an exciting new challenge in comparison to my early projects in my college career.
However, the strangest part but far was our unorthodox controller: we were able to acquire a set of jet ski handlebars, reprogrammed to function as gaming controllers. Very cool.
Our game was designed to be played with these proper jet ski controls, where the player would have to turn left and right to control their character’s movements and use the handles to accelerate. This aspect of the game was super exciting to everyone on the team! But it did pose one question to me: how should the player properly control it? Obviously they could turn the handles left and right to steer, but what about accelerating? Should the player twist the handle back to accelerate? Would that even be comfortable?
For the longest time in our development, this was how the player would accelerate their speed - by turning the handle bar back. However in playtesting, people found this method to be really uncomfortable, especially when making sudden movements to dodge obstacles and collect cash. However, in my research, I was able to find a simple solution: On real jet skis, the rider doesn’t control their speed by twisting the handle as one might expect, but instead with the throttle levers, similar to a motorcycle. With this new knowledge in mind, I immediately knew it was the solution to our biggest problem with playability.
From there, implementation and development went smoothly! I transitioned to asset creation and made the art for the ending sequence of the game. I oversaw its development and assisted in designing the timing of the sequence. Using a fantastic neon sign font that one of my team members found, we were able to create a really awesome sequence with the help of our animators.
Finally, with just a few weeks until delivery, everything was properly set up and prepared - except for one thing: the main menu. In our development, we quickly realized that we over scoped our plans for the project. Elements were going to have to be cut; the main menu was on the chopping block. However, in talks with my producer, I was able to come up with a simpler menu than the one previously pitched.
While the original intro was planned to be an elaborate cut scene, with an infomercial style look to its layout, this new one would be far more stripped down and straight forward. This new menu would be the game’s logo in the center with equalizer bars sounding it and reacting to the music, and beneath that would be a simple message, “Hold down handlebars to begin!” From there, it would immediately transition to gameplay, putting the player right into the action.
This new design would be easier to design and implement than the previous one. Plus, it would allow the players to get into the game far faster than before with little to no wait time.
However, my producer had one stipulation for this new main menu: make the equalizer bars work. Challenge accepted! Looking into the issue, I discovered it could easily be done in Adobe After Effects. While I had never used After Effects before, I saw this as a great opportunity to learn! I took the time to learn more about the software and how it functions, how I could make the equalizer bars, and how I could get them to react to the music. After a few hours of YouTube tutorials, I was able to design the equalizer bars and quickly got them off to programming to begin the development of the main menu!
Next up: delivery day! We packed up all our items, decorations, computers, and headed to the event. It was a massive success! Everyone from young kids to elderly loved our game, some even coming back to play it up to 10 times! People fell in love with the visual style, the music, and the fun gameplay with the controller. It was really a great sight to see for my last Fuse before Capstone.
