The game
The game took place on a deserted island where you were supposed to collect car tires. When you collected some of those tires, it triggered a specific event that required you to do something. For example, when you collected a specific tire, the icon with your water was drained. At the same time you heard some heavy breathing in your headphones, and your task was to drink water from the well. Those tasks were timed, and the times where analyzed for the thesis.
Collect a tire
Realize you need to go to the well
Drink from the well
The thesis
With the thesis we found that there was no significant difference between the times it took people who played without sound to finish a task compared to people who played with sound. However, after looking at the total time, it was found that people who played with sound did complete the tasks faster than people who played without sound. This is interesting as it could be depict the importance of sound in video games.
My work
I was the main developer on this project. I did all the programming, helped with the level design, I found or created the assets and I found the sounds for the different tasks. It was a combined effort to come up with the tasks.
The main thing I worked on was to get the game working, and because it couldn’t take that much time, I had to rely heavily on readymade assets. The only art I made myself for this game was the UI and the blue screen which was supposed to make you feel submerged.
UI and blue ocean screen
I also did the task system which made sure that something happened when you collected some tires. It also started a timer when the tire was picked up, and stopped the timer when the player had performed the correct task. All times were then saved to the users computer when the game was finished.