Lead Developer: The Adventures of Ranger Raccoon

I designed and implemented engaging gameplay mechanics for minigames in "The Adventures of Ranger Raccoon," a respiration health-focused video game funded by the Health IT SPARK Grant from the University of Texas at Austin, School of Nursing. Collaborating with a multidisciplinary team of 10, I integrated these mechanics with a confidential respiratory device under development. Additionally, I recorded and edited the game trailer for the game's first look.

Game Goals

When we first started on this project, we wanted this game to allow the player to learn breathing exercises in an engaging and fun way that wasn't too repetitive. We initially settled with a Marioparty-style approach for the game where the player would play minigames that trained different breathing exercises. However, we needed something to allow the player to have some kind of progression system to encourage players to continue to play the game. So we decided to use one of the initially scrapped ideas infinite runner and use that concept to create bridge between progressing the game and playing the minigames.

Our final concept was to have the player start the game in the infinite runner and then when running into obstacles during the infinite runner the player would have to complete the minigame associated with the obstacle.

Grants

Health IT SPARK Grant from the University of Texas at Austin, School of Nursing

Game Trailer

This is the trailer that I made for our grant-funded respirator game showcasing gameplay and whats to come.

Game Development

As the lead tech developer for the minigames, I devised innovative ways to incorporate breathing exercises as interactive inputs for the game. Below are the core features of the minigames. keep in mind that this is from the original idea document so some features were not implemented in the final game.

Minigames Overall Idea

We will start with 3 basic minigames first that can be adjusted based on the different breathing exercises. What we want to focus on when developing these minigames is that they can be changed easily to fit the breathing exercise that we are trying to train while keeping it not too repetitive or similar to the other two games.

Solutions

One idea that could solve the problem of making the games easy to adjust to different exercises is by making them into a rhythm-like game. For example, let's say we were doing the helicopter game, if we adjust the breathing exercise for the helicopter game, we could just change each portion of the helicopter game to different lengths based on the breathing exercise.

Minigames

For both the helicopter and duck games, to make the game adjustable, there should be gauges that show the player the duration of an exhale and inhale, if they successfully follow the gauge duration, then the action is complete and they move on to the next part of the exercise. However, if they fail to keep up with the gauge, then the gauge progress bar will change to red and the player will be forced to retry that portion of the breathing exercise and the visuals will indicate that as well (whether it is the duck swimming back to its babies or the helicopter landing, refer to the minigame design document to see what happens when the player fails)

By doing this method, the game can be adjusted with just a quick number change. If it’s box breathing we can extend the exhale and inhale to 4 seconds, while pursed lip breathing we can adjust to 2.

For pursed lip breathing, there are generally only 2 major steps per cycle, exhale and inhale, so if we were to create new games for this breathing technique, we just have to make a game that only requires 2 steps from start to completion.

For box breathing, there are 5 steps in total for one cycle, inhale, exhale, and hold your breath. If we were to make new games for box breathing, we would only need to make a game that finishes in a 5 step motion.

Essentially when developing these minigames, the criteria is that they:

Have a certain amount of steps in each cycle
- pursed lip breathing being 2 steps with a prescribed amount of cycles
- Inhaling for 2 seconds and exhale for 4

Basic Barebones Level

The player has to follow a certain amount of steps that involve inhaling, exhaling, and hold your breath.
Each step takes a certain amount of time.
If the player fails to exhale or inhale based on the wind speed numbers from the numbers or fails to complete the duration of the step, then restart the step.
Once the player has completed the step, increment a step counter, and continue to the next step.
Once the player has completed a predetermined amount of steps, increment the cycle counter, and restart to step 1.
Once the cycle counter has reached the predetermined threshold, the player wins.
For now, we will have to inhale as z, exhale as x, and hold our breath as no input

Mechanics

When inhaling, that will determine the total distance that you run, when you exhale, that is a percentage of the total distance you got from the inhale.
For example, if you inhale for 2 seconds which equates to 2 meters of running for the duck, then when you exhale, you can only run for a maximum of 2 meters. If the player doesn't exhale for the whole duration, then the distance traveled when exhaled will be only a percentage of the inhale duration.
If the player inhales and exhales too early, the only part the player will be punished is if they are short, not if they overextend.

Once these steps are programmed, all we would need is to implement art and animations in between to complete the game.

For simplicity, the player will have a straight path in their main menu screen, with different segments on the path to signify the tasks ahead that need to be completed to progress to the goal (unknown for now). The player will be given a certain amount of stamina per day to limit the amount of games played per day.

Streaks

If the player plays at least once per day, they will get a streak that accumulates every day which will give the player a special award when reaching milestones (for example 1 reward every 7 streaks)

Stamina

The player is restricted to a certain amount of minigames they can play per day to progress on the path to the goal. However, stamina is not consumed if they play minigames in practice mode, which is just the same thing as playing the minigames, just doesn’t progress the path or count towards streaks.

Final Design

In the end, we decided to settle with a visual UI indicator that would expand and shrink based on what segment of the exercise the person is on.

When the player needs to inhale the UI shows the inhale indicator and the blue circle starts to expand, simulating lungs expanding.

When the player needs to exhale the UI shows the exhale indicator and the blue circle starts to shrink, simulating lungs contracting.

Code logic Explanation

In this video, I go over the code logic and play the game to show how the game works.