Reckless Recycling was a student project for the Creative Incubator module under the brief ‘Environment’. I spent 3 months designing, programming and creating character art for the game.
You play as a character brought onto the reckless recycling team, sorting waste under time pressure and playing minigames to process the waste. If you can’t keep up, there are big environmental concerns!
Click to play!
Website for the game
Blog
I had to develop 3 different minigames (metal, plastic, paper) and enjoyed getting them animated to look dynamic and fun. I used a lot of coroutines, timers and lerps to get things moving and track where things are in minigames.
Each minigame script is similar (I would derive these now) in events and inputs, which contact the main singleton game scoring script and calls functions to alter the score.
I use cameras and render textures for the minigames and character selectors with their models culled from the main camera.
Character selection childs the model to the player logic object and gets their animators, then switches the game music to their theme.
Throwing uses time and sensitivity to add to the velocity of the rubbish to a limit when ‘r’ is held, then activates its rigidbody when released.
I was brought onto a team who’s pitch was ‘Overcooked, but recycling’. We discerned the goal to be to raise awareness of the pressure on waste management and how to recycle properly, to sell to a primary school age group. We used audience personas to help this.
Feature set priorities
Audience persona - child
My game ideas
Final mindmap
We each presented minigame ideas which were voted on and discussed within the team. We researched actual recycling processes to ensure these were fun, but accurate.
We prototyped and shared within class and outside a lot, from ideas to paper prototypes and greyboxes, accepting feedback such as switching controls and adding further hints and tutorial to ensure accessibility.
Miro prototype
I modelled and rigged all characters in the game, and did all animation.
It was decided as we were working with few 3D artists that we’d take a retro, low-poly approach to help us keep on track and reflect the arcade feel.
This game definitely succeeds at being a fun and chaotic minigame collection and educates users about recycling. In testing, many players became quickly competitive which was clear proof that the tone was working. However, the difficulty definitely needed balancing and the tutorial should be clearer and more dynamic to gameplay to ensure users are accommodated for.
This was my first try at character animation and I’d like to revisit it, but I think the models come across clearly as child-friendly mascots.