
Mete Ruso - Games & Level Designer
Treasure Island
Project Type: University Project
Brief: Mobile Game
Status: Prototype/Done
Overview
A grid based treasure digging arcade game. Digging a tile reveals how many adjacent tiles in the grid hold treasure in a reverse minesweeper system.
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The brief of a mobile game with an advanced programming technique. I chose data driven design that entailed using data stored externally from the code that is read and deciphered to inform aspects of the game.
The maps were made in an excel grid that outputted a comma delimited string of numbers that the code read and created the map from tiles to be stored in an array of tiles.
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I had to make considerations for Mobile Game design. This mainly involved designing intuitive UI with large buttons, replayability, and energy mechanics to limit play time.
Project Information:
Software Used:
Game Engine: Unity
Image Editing: Photoshop
Data Driven Design: Microsoft Excel
Conclusion:
This project taught me the importance of data driven design and what is can do for game design. I had to shift my thinking into different gaming media and different styles of design. In this respect I think I succeeded in creating an idea for a mobile game that takes advantage of data driven design principles.
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I had planned some features to capitalise on the social aspects of mobile gaming such as leaderboards and personal homes/shared spaces. These were not implemented due to time constraints.




Project Responsibilities:
Data Driven Design: researching and implementing data driven design principles.
Mobile Game Design Considerations: Large UI with touchscreen buttons, Replayability, Limited Playtime, Social aspects
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Random Generation: Loot generates randomly on the grid and records how many adjacent tiles hold treasure.