Opi Opi is a cute 2D platforming adventure where you bounce on top of little bugs and overcome natural obstacles to save the season of spring.
Release date & platforms TBA - Developed in Unity.
Role | 2024-2025 | Systems, level, environment & audio designer. Music composer.
Design Pillars
Movement based on diagonal jumps between nodes in a vertically oriented world, set on the surface of a tree trunk.
Coordination with a lively ecosystem, with challenges centered around the unique behaviours of surrounding flora and fauna.
Solved Challenges
Thinking with nodes ->
I developed the guidelines for Opi Opi's unique level design, in which everything interacts with nodes set in a sort of loose, diagonal grid.
I wrote specs to improve layout clarity and structure (e.g., marking enemy paths, safety nets, etc), and described various enemies and obstacles.
Fool-proof systems
I designed 30+ micro-levels to test the flexibility of core mechanics before working on content for the actual demo.
This allowed us to understand the types of challenges we could create effectively, and build upon them gradually as we planned the game's progression.
Bursting with juice
I wrote the requirements for and adjusted various visual effects to improve action readability, like leaning motions to direct your jumps, animations when bouncing on top of enemies, highlights, shakes, etc.
I also designed and implemented all of the game's music and sfx.
From "why did it do that?" to "wow, this is cool!"
I designed dynamic tutorial dialogues to introduce our mechanics seamlessly within the game's narrative, along with easy bottleneck sections to ensure players could understand everything intuitively.
This was specially challenging for Opi Opi, because testers often had clashing expectations derived from years of playing more typical platformers.
Fluid motions on a grid
I contributed to the design of core systems, like player movement and controls in collaboration with Pato (Opi's amazing director and artist).
One surprisingly nuanced task was deciding how the player should bounce upon colliding with any kind of wall, coming from any possible angle.
Pretty sights for bug eyes
I set the game's checkpoints, events, and cameras to control the pacing of each level, and designed the environments utilizing tilesets and additional assets (all beautifully drawn by Pato).
By layering plants, walls, paths and shadows, I managed to make each section in the demo feel unique, guiding players with interesting landmarks.
