Ion Run is a short educational game meant to teach the fundamentals of electrical circuitry to college students who have no idea how any of that works (like me) by using a traffic analogy. Developed by a team of 12 for our game development class, the game contains 3 levels which introduce concepts centered around Ohm's Law. The player must add resistance to the circuit to fulfill mission objectives and ensure traffic flows as it should.
I was in charge of concepting the parts which were to be analogous to those found in actual circuits. My group decided on a low poly style for both the parts and environment and went for a very Tron-esque futuristic look.
Low poly models I made for the main circuit components.
Transporter for vehicles that run out of energy.
Ammeter model - meant to resemble a traffic counter.
Voltmeter model - made to resemble a speed detector.
Diode model - a sort of one-way checkpoint.
Additionally, I was in charge of designing and creating all GUI assets to keep the look consistent with our vision. The assets were imported by the tech team into Unity for use as buttons, menus, and other features. Some of the main assets are below.
A sample display of our part selection menu. We chose to implement it as a radial menu in order to minimize the amount of clicking necessary and simplify the display of information. Plus, radial menus look nice.
Sample display of the level select menu.
The main GUI component, displayed during every level so the user could be reminded of the meanings of our analogy in terms of Ohm's Law and test their circuits.
Sample displays for ammeters and voltmeters.
Sample mission screen.
Concepts and sprite sheet for a nice little robot who would guide the player. I created 3 concepts going in very different artistic directions and consulted with the group to pick the desired features.We decided on the shape of the robot on the right due to his high-tech appeal, but with the leftmost color scheme to reinforce the idea of the player "constructing" circuits.
Sprite sheet for the robot guide and a "construction log."
Several additional concepts were made early on for parts we chose not to use in the final version of the game as we moved toward a more abstract representation of the concepts involved.
Originally we were going to have a character particle "run" through the circuit while being chased by evil particles. These were some sample designs for possible characters.
