Lavaland
Lavaland is a second year university project made in a class of video game experimentation. I was the original creator of the game and pitched the idea to my class. It was 1 of the 4 project selected out of the 35 pitched for a contest to present our completed game in the festival "Montreal Joue". In the end we weren't picked for the event but we were approached by the company organizing the event to help us develop our idea further.
Gameplay
The goal of Lavaland is really simple, you have to be the last player standing on the game mat. It mimics the children's game "The floor is Lava" thanks to the hardware we developed in class.
The players will be confronted to lava waves (waves of light created by our giant mat) and they will have to skip the mortal tile if they want to stay alive. To skip the tiles, they can either jump over it or run from while staying on the mat. Lavaland boast a large number of light patterns which bring different types of challenges to keep players on their toes, you can see 1 of them on the GIF below. The game can be played with 2 to 4 players.
The goal of Lavaland is really simple, you have to be the last player standing on the game mat. It mimics the children's game "The floor is Lava" thanks to the hardware we developed in class.
The players will be confronted to lava waves (waves of light created by our giant mat) and they will have to skip the mortal tile if they want to stay alive. To skip the tiles, they can either jump over it or run from while staying on the mat. Lavaland boast a large number of light patterns which bring different types of challenges to keep players on their toes, you can see 1 of them on the GIF below. The game can be played with 2 to 4 players.
My Role
The concept of Lavaland was my original idea we we were asked to think of a videogame which used other types of peripheral than the ordinary mouse, keyboard, gamepad. It also had to be easy to understand and flashy so it could garner attention during the event of Montreal in which we were competing for a place in. I came up with this idea after realizing that kid's game easily fitted the criteria of easy to understand. After being selected among all the under pitches, teams formed and the development phase began.
I was put in charge of the project so my job was to set our objectives, keep track of everyone's work and help every sphere of the project as much as possible. Considering the special nature of our hardware, we had to start from scratch and so our team delved into electric theory to create our tiles(forming the mat). We used a device called Arduino to link our game engine to our piece of hardware and I helped design a easy to create pressure plate that sent feedback to the game engine. The material used to create our player mat had to be solid enough to support several people jumping on it, but it meant we had to use expensive material such as plexiglass. So from the get go, I took the decision to limit ourselves to a proof of concept and focus on making 1 usable tile that could be reproduced. Still to do this I had to approach our school and I was able to secure funding for our project. Considering the fact that our game was only destined to be a proof of concept until it were to be chosen, to prove the feasibility of our idea to investors I tasked my team to create an official blueprint of the tile with the objective of being able to easily reproduce it. Also we made a cost analysis and we reached the conclusion that the full realization of the project would cost 1006,55$ to manufacture 84 tiles, so we had a of 11,99$ per tile. Finally, I was the one who was in charge of presenting our project to the company responsible for our contest and I pitched this idea 3 times giving me confidence to pitch ideas in front of real investors.
Architecture
In it's final version, Lavaland consist of play mat, 4 meters wide and 4 meters long, consisting of 84 hexagonal tiles spread in a hexagonal pattern.
Each tile is separated in three sections:
1) Light section: This is the upper section of the tile which uses foam(support), plexiglass(solid and transparent) and LED to project light on the surface of the tile and create waves of light when bunched together with other tiles.
2) Pressure section: This middle section is comprised of foam, aluminum foil and an electric current. When someone steps on the tile, the foam compresses and the 2 aluminum foils come in contact, one of them was electrified and when they touch it send a signal to the Arduino so the game engine knows who's where. When they step out, the foam comes back to his original form and the aluminum detach nullifying the signal.
3) Anchor section: This section is comprised of velcro which allows the tiles to easily be attached to a underlaying mat. This section allows for easy assembly and easy transportation.
In it's final version, Lavaland consist of play mat, 4 meters wide and 4 meters long, consisting of 84 hexagonal tiles spread in a hexagonal pattern.
Each tile is separated in three sections:
1) Light section: This is the upper section of the tile which uses foam(support), plexiglass(solid and transparent) and LED to project light on the surface of the tile and create waves of light when bunched together with other tiles.
2) Pressure section: This middle section is comprised of foam, aluminum foil and an electric current. When someone steps on the tile, the foam compresses and the 2 aluminum foils come in contact, one of them was electrified and when they touch it send a signal to the Arduino so the game engine knows who's where. When they step out, the foam comes back to his original form and the aluminum detach nullifying the signal.
3) Anchor section: This section is comprised of velcro which allows the tiles to easily be attached to a underlaying mat. This section allows for easy assembly and easy transportation.
Gros Joueur
"Gros Joueur" was the company organizing the contest for which this project was conceived. Unfortunately, our project came close second to being chosen to participate in a festival in Montreal, on the basis that the deadline didn't permit the manufacturing of the hardware in time. But the seriousness and rigor of our team and approach combined with the potential of the idea prompted "Gros Joueur" to approach us and propose us to help in the further development of the project. They were ready to guide us and finance our research and development of the project independently of school and the contest. We had a few encounters to organise the partnership, but unfortunately the Covid-19 put a stop to the process considering the impact it had on large scale social event that "Gros Joueur" proposed.
"Gros Joueur" was the company organizing the contest for which this project was conceived. Unfortunately, our project came close second to being chosen to participate in a festival in Montreal, on the basis that the deadline didn't permit the manufacturing of the hardware in time. But the seriousness and rigor of our team and approach combined with the potential of the idea prompted "Gros Joueur" to approach us and propose us to help in the further development of the project. They were ready to guide us and finance our research and development of the project independently of school and the contest. We had a few encounters to organise the partnership, but unfortunately the Covid-19 put a stop to the process considering the impact it had on large scale social event that "Gros Joueur" proposed.
Here is a copy of the evaluation we received from the company (in French):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fcmqdrzls4mX-E53Q_IdYall5ChMhUNX/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fcmqdrzls4mX-E53Q_IdYall5ChMhUNX/view?usp=sharing