Racoon Rascal

Level and Systems Design

A simple child-friendly parkour game where you play as a mischievous racoon, with an insatiable desire for shiny objects. This was my first large group project at Futuregames.

• Team of 15 (Artists, QA, Designers, Programmers and a Producer)
• Timeframe: 3 weeks
• Skills: Level Design and Systems Design
• Software: Unity

This project was a super fun introduction to game production. I recall when we were given guidelines by the school that we were making games for 7-11 year olds and being frustrated at the time, as it did not feel like a “real” game.

However, once we started interviewing kids and thinking back to when we were younger, I found myself having an absolute blast. I distinctly remember our first playtest with nearby school kids and seeing a young girl’s face light up with joy as she ran around my map collecting watches and jewelry that I had placed. 

I was responsible for the level in the game, and relied heavily on my experience as a playtester for Apex Legends, thinking about the map in terms of rotations and POI’s. I also received great advice from one of the artists on my team who pointed me in the right direction with some GDC talks.

I spent almost the first week, which in retrospect was too long, planning out the map and going through iterations on paper before working in engine. I also spent time taking inspiration from my childhood park, stealing aspects of it or certain layouts. This was very helpful and made it so that when I was in engine I could get straight to creating my map and not worry about creating it from scratch.

Racoon Rascal and its trailer is available for free here!