Ernest Adams Project – TrollDozer

One of the more difficult projects was the one we got from the game designer and author Ernest Adams. We got divided into groups of five. Each team choose their:

• Lead Designer 
• Art Director (I was choosen to be the Art Director)
• Level Designer
• Mechanics Designer
• User Interface Designer

In one evening (went over night time aswell) we were supposed to come up with one game with the help from a card. On the card our group got 

                “My dream is to drive bulldozers and steamshovels – this is a kid’s game“. 

With a new group (people I had never spoken to before but turned out to be very nice to work with) we created TrollDozer, a single player game, were you are driving in third person view the main character, a bulldozer and you can switch from it to a steamshovel. In order to make it a kid’s game we decided to make it more friendly and made the avatars “human”. This was also a way to solve the way to change the vehicles not having to have a person go out from the one shovel and enter the other. We also added some characteristics to the avatars. 
The steamshovel we made old and grumpy and that is because the steamshovels played a major role in public works in the 19th and early 20th century. The bulldozer on the other hand we made young and abit over ambitious. This created a great contrast between the two machines.

We wanted to make the player feel that he could use the machines for different good purposes to increase the driving experience. Therefore we included swedish folk lore trolls in the game that had destroyed the world and the player’s task was to build up and clear the mess with help from the machines. (lift away a tree from the road, repair a broken bridge where the damage was caused by the nasty trolls.)

The following day we had completed a game (only documented not actually playable) that we felt comfortable enough to present to the class and to the professors.