The Great Peking Peak Escape

Game Design / Development Project

Project Overview

Role: Level Designer, 2D Artist
Collaborators:
Tools Used:
Duration: 24 Hours (July 1st 2023 - July 2nd 2023)

Project Video

Project Description

The Great Peking Peak Escape was a submission to SFU Game Dev's Mountain Top Game Jam 2023, under the theme of "Peak". In The Great Peking Peak Escape, you play as a duck who has found itself in the belly of a kitchen, and are trying to escape the fate of being roasted for dinner. In order to escape as the flightless bird, the player must utilize rope and a butcher's hook as a makeshift grappling hook to swing and glide your way to freedom.

In this project, my main contributions were creating the art and animations for the game, in addition to collaborating on level design.

Art & Animation

Character Design & Animation

We initially decided on the direction of having a duck as our main character due to the pun within "Peak"ing Duck, given our theme. From there, as I was in charge of the visual assets we were to use, I decided that a light-hearted, comedic approach would be best at drawing out the appeal of our game and its narrative. Large, exaggerated motions and poses were key as a lack of facial features made certain expressions hard to convey.

GIF cycling through different animation states for the duck.
GIF cycling through different animation states for the duck.

Level Assets

One asset I spent a lot of time refining during the jam was the tileset used to lay out the level. As our level design consisted of several surfaces, I needed to ensure that a cursory glance of a given tile would inform the player of its properties. In order to make my process as efficient as possible, I started by defining all the variants I would need as shapes - sloped tiles, edge tiles and corner tiles - before drawing the textures to go over them. This approach allowed me to quickly make new tilesets as they became necessary.

Tileset used for The Great Peking Peak Escape's level design.
Tileset used for The Great Peking Peak Escape's level design.

Further expanding on the idea of a comedic approach, I brought up the idea to use random objects you would find in a kitchen to be incorporated into level design, similar to certain games within the genre like Getting Over It or Only Up. These objects helped further anchor the game's setting and mood, to suit the duck's exaggerated animations.

Some of the many objects created to be used as random kitchen objects in level design.
Some of the many objects created to be used as random kitchen objects in level design.

Level Design

Due to the theme of this jam being "Peak", we partially interpreted the theme in such as the player reaching the "peak" of their abilities and overcoming a difficult challenge in pursuing a sense of achievement. As a result, we began to draw inspiration from games such as Getting Over It and Jump King - games that revolved around singular mechanics, but had very punishing level design where failure could set you very far back.

My contributions to the level struck a balance between the difficult level design seen in these games, as well as balancing the light-hearted humor of our narrative via abstract challenges involving the aforementioned random kitchen objects, and "traps" that aim to provide memorable comedic bits for players.

Level design screenshot of The Great Peking Peak Escape, showing the design for the final sections of the level.
Level design screenshot of The Great Peking Peak Escape, showing the design for the final sections of the level.

Takeaways

Overall, I believe this project has helped me further refine my skills in level design and pixel art, and served as a very valuable experince in scoping a project properly. I was able to think on my feet and communicate effectively with my team, enabling productive means of feedback in spite of the short amount of time we had.