Genre: Racing Game
Engine: UE4
Team Size: 12 people
Project Duration: 24 weeks (November 2020 - June 2021)
Release: Itch.io
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Tropical Trouble is an exciting arcade racing game set in a tropical jungle. The player will have to drift along dangerous curves and run through all the obstacles if they want to win.
I joined the project during production, where I worked as a system designer on the 3Cs. My biggest contribution was concepting and implementing the drift mechanic.
Vehicle Controls
After researching competitor titles, I made a feature breakdown for the programmers. When the rough car functionality was in place, I worked on the balance and game feel.
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We decided to develop the car functionality from scratch, as the template provided by Unreal used a simulation that was too in-depth for the arcade feel we wanted to go for.
Balancing and polishing was done with the goal of making the car as pleasant and easy to use as possible. The focus of the gameplay was on the drifting and on the destructibles, so we didn't the basic controls to require a lot of mastery to use.
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Balancing was done by tinkering with the variables of the car model. Polishing th edge cases (like the behaviour of the car on slopes, where it tended to slip), required working in the blueprints.
The Drift
Concept
We decided early on the two mechanics that the player would have to master: drifts and destructible crates. I was tasked with implementing the drift.
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The mechanic takes heavy inspiration from Mario Kart: you hold a button to take a strong turn either left or right, and the longer you hold the drift the bigger the boost that will come out of it.
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An interesting difference from how Mario Kart implemented it, is that the turbo in Tropical Trouble only goes up by two charges instead of three. I decided it because of two reasons:
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It had to be balanced together with the destructible crates. Whenever the player breaks them a boost meter is filled, which can then be used to get a second type of turbo. We didn't want one mechanic to overtake the other, so I decided debuff the drift a bit.
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Due to time constraints, we had to develop, and thus balance, the car and the tracks together. This was one of the compromises we found.
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A bit of the research I did on the drift in Mario Kart.
Visual Effects
After implementing the mechanic using blueprints, I decided to create the VFX for the Drift and the Turbo myself.
I used Niagara, Unreal's in-built system to do so. At first, the look for the VFX was identical to Mario Kart: sparks flied off the backwheel during the drift, changing color depending on the charge of the turbo.
The first version of the visual effects for the Drift was still heavily inspired by Mario Kart
Later on, however, I decided to change the effects to better suit the theme of Tropical Trouble.
While keeping the three levels of drift visually distinct I made:
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Level 1: Turbo isn't charged yet, only some dust is shown;
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Level 2: Turbo is charged, mud starts flying;
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Level 3: Turbo is charged to the max, small brown pebbles start flying;
The Drift mechanic at work.