Bryan Nguyen
Darby's Circus
Project type: University team project
Engine: Unity
Languages: C#
Primary Role: Lead Programmer, Game Designer
Team Members: Bryan Nguyen, Ruizhe Shen, Xiaodan Zhang
Darby's Circus is a narrative-focused game with platforming and simple puzzle-solving elements. It is about an animal trainer in a circus struggling to be successful while caring for his tiger. This was a USC Games 3-person team project assignment at the University of Southern California.
Programming:
I programmed the character controllers, game mechanics, dialogue system, inventory, and camera work
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The trainer and the tiger have similar movement controls using a state machine animation system with a five sub-state jumping animation
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The trainer has additional mechanics of using the meat and whip to lure the tiger and making it jump during the show when the tiger is within range of the player
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The dialogue system was made using scriptable objects in Unity C# and a manager script to play specific text
Design:
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Worked on writing the story with my team initially through Twine to test the story.
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Decided on having two playable characters, the trainer and the tiger, that swap between them depending on the time of day.
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Wanted players to understand the story from both perspectives but have different mechanics for both characters.
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The Tiger is primarily about platforming and solving simple puzzles with an inventory system to pick up items.
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The trainer has platforming elements but also has to use items like meat and a whip to make the tiger perform during the show at night.
I also designed the different parts of the levels and puzzles for the tiger section of the game. The player went through the same circus tents each day. To make them different, I built upon their designs from the previous day with new obstacles that changed the puzzles. The end goal remained the same so that the players would already have an understanding of where to go.
