💎 Pitch
In a broken family, a brother and sister find shelter in a book for children to flee from the turmoil of their parents. Explore with them a story shaped by their imagination and fantasies. Will they be able to escape the harsh reality or will they be caught back in it ?
Explore with them a story shaped by their imagination and fantasies. Will they manage to escape harsh reality, or will it catch up with them?
🌟 Introduction
Twice Upon a Time is a chill and cooperative two-player narrative platformer that brings you back to a nostalgic world filled with sweets and a gripping story.
Over 3 months of work for a major school project, we had to create a Couch Game. We decided to build one around a heartfelt sibling story with a touch of competition.
We merged platforming, narrative, rivalry, taunting and fun into one game.
Since playing books were a big part of my childhood, I really wanted the game to spark nostalgia for players like me. I wanted the dialogues and the funny or teasing quotes between the siblings to feel authentic and realistic, creating a sense of attachment to their story.
👾 Gameplay
Twice Upon a Time is a 2D platformer, so the gameplay is pretty simple — it's all about jumping, pushing, pulling and grabbing things.
Since it was meant to be a vertical slice, we planned multiple themed worlds. For the one and only world present in the slice, we chose a "Sweets & Candy" theme.
As a duo game, two players experience asymmetric gameplay from time to time, mixing cooperation and competition for a bit of spice, teasing and sibling rivalry.
Gameplay Video
📃 What I've realized on the project
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Conceiving the obstacles
This was a really fun task. Since we were in a "Sweets & Candy" world, we wanted to use candies and sweet treats as obstacles. We made a list of all the candies we used to eat when we were younger.
Once the list was done, we came up with 2 or 3 ideas per candy to explore different ways to use them in a platformer. For example, marshmallows could act as trampolines or bouncers, and candy canes could be used as hooks or levers.
Brother & Sister
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Level Design
My second task was all about level design. With my three teammates, we slowly created small compounds using one or two ingredients at most.
The idea was to explore the full potential of each candy, building a variety of puzzles and platforming sections that we could later combine.
My role was to select the puzzles with the best potential, knowing we could only include a limited number.
So I sketched out early versions of the levels on paper or the whiteboard, placing sections for dialogue, and others for competitive or cooperative gameplay.
📌 Lessons Learned
- We faced a huge number of challenges during production, from deciding on the art direction, choosing which mechanics to keep or cut, to delays in level design and art. It was a tough project to work on.
- All those problems taught me a lot about how good organization is key to a successful project, especially in terms of management. Communicating between departments helps ensure everyone shares the same vision, avoiding the need to redo or restart work.
- Being Lead Game Designer on the project taught me how to properly connect the different parts of the team, share information clearly, and organize small meetings when major decisions were made to ensure everyone understood and agreed. It was an amazing project to work on.
âš¡ Quick infos
Project made over 3 months as part of the Couch Game section of our school curriculum.
The team :
Designers : Michael Bao, Rayan Kayne, Noé Henriot and myself
Artists : Flora Denis, Marion Puigcerver and Aurore Martin
Programmers : Victor Lacombe, Leo LeLann and Santino Romero
Sound Designers : Yassine Boudlal and Alexandre Cardot
Producers : Tom Crochet and Thomas Boeglin
Yes! It's playable on Itch.io on this link here!
