FACTORY RESET
A single-player first-person puzzle game about a magnetic robot on a quest to find their way home through a Soviet-inspired cyberpunk world. Use your magnetic hands and feet to push and pull your way through three different levels!
Released: July 2021
Developed: August 2020 - June 2021
Team:
- Joseph Henry Stadolnik IV (myself) - Gameplay Programmer & Designer
- Christian Orion Adler - Artist
- Raymond Dolan - Gameplay Programmer & Audio Lead
- Elizabeth Kirschner - Accessible Design Lead
- Unity HDRP
- GitHub
- Gimp
- Blender
About:
This game was created as our Major Qualifying Project at Worcester Polytechnic Institute,
which is a capstone project demonstrating our abilities in our academic majors. In my case, it satisfied my degree requirements for Computer Science and for IMGD* Technology.
The game had a strong emphasis on accessibility, with many features and design decisions intended to make the game playable by a larger audience.
The menu options provided included:
- Remappable controls (with controller support)
- Adjustable look sensitivity
- Adjustable subtitles
- Various resolution and display settings
- Customizable volume levels
- The option to change between hold and toggle control modes
- The option to hide the re-orientation animation (to reduce motion sickness)
For more detail on all aspects of the game, please refer to our paper on the project.
* Interactive Media and Game Development
My Role: Gameplay Programmer & Designer
I was primarily in charge of designing and implementing the movement mechanics of Factory Reset as well as the game's moment-to-moment gameplay.
I also created the game's heads-up display and some visual effects.
My specific achievements on this project included:
- Implementing the magnetic feet mechanic, which lets players pull themselves to polarized surfaces and re-orient to stand and walk along them.
- Implementing a custom player controller leveraging Unity's physics with support for arbitrary gravity direction.
- Designing the low-level gameplay and puzzles of all three levels in the game.
- Designing and implementing the full city skyway level, including endlessly scrolling randomized buildings and idly flying vehicles that shift position based on player proximity.
- Designing, drawing, and implementing the heads-up display.
- Implementing a custom subtitle and cutscene system.
- Implementing contextual hand movement and actions entirely through scripting.
- Creating flying car thruster visual effects.
Other Notes:
- Factory Reset won the 2021 Provost's MQP Award from Worcester Polytechnic Institute's IMGD Department for being an outstanding Major Qualifying Project.
- Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our team worked remotely for the entire development process of Factory Reset.
Links:
itch.io
Project Paper