Rock Hunting with Mohs

An educational video game for 2-5th graders designed to teach the basics of geology.

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A conversation with a Mohs and a blue bird named Blueford. He says 'I need Blue for my wife! My beautiful wife!'

The scratch kit scene from Rock Hunting with Mohs. A rock labeled Limestone sits between a set of tipped scratchers, each labeled with a hardness value from 1 to 10. On the right, there is a selector panel with the same numbers.

The streak plate scene from Rock Hunting with Mohs. Someone has drawn Mohs, and written 'Mohs was here'.

The rock journal from Rock Hunting with Mohs. The book is open to the page for obsidian, and it contains information about the rock's type, location, and color.

Project Information

Rock Hunting with Mohs is a puzzle adventure game. You play as Mohs, a bird obsessed with repairing a torn-up rock guide.

This was a project developed as part of Christopher Weaver's Video Game Development course at Wesleyan University.

Medium: PC/Mac Video Game (Unity)
Role: Gameplay Designer, Programmer, Level Designer, Writer
Duration: 13 Weeks
Accolades: Won first place in course competition
Release: Available on itch.io

Responsibilities

Level and Gameplay Design

Designing, specifying, and implementing the flow of gameplay between the adventure and educational sections. Used google workspace and JIRA to manage milestones and requirements.

Design of Scratch Kit and Streak Plate scenes.
Dialogue interaction pacing, content, and flow.
Themed NPC puzzles engineered to reinforce learning.
Map layout, structure, and implementation.
Implemented layout and collision using Unity's Tilemap and Rule Tile tools.

Achievements:

Fully designed and implemented each of the game's four levels.
Designed, programmed, and implemented digital versions of real-world geological tests which children could replicate after playing.
Created 15 NPC puzzles that provided gameplay variety while reinforcing learning about rocks.

A rough sketch of the scratch kit scene, with labeled sections and a descirption of the experimental structure.

The initial design proposal for the scratch kit, presented by Shannon, our producer, as part of the game pitch.

A more formalized version of the mockup, made with computer graphics. It has been implemented into Unity.

The first mockup of the scratch kit I programmed and implemented in Unity in collaboration with our UI designer, Maze.

A group of children sit at a TV screen, playing Rock Hunting with Mohs. They are conducting a scratch test using the finalized version of the scene.

The final version of the scratch kit in use by a fourth grader during field testing at the local elementary school.

Programming

Built, tested, and fixed scratch/streak scenes, tilemap and sprite collisions, and dialogue trees using Unity 2023 and C# 9.0. Collaborated with other programmers on implementation, code reviews, and technical designs through daily stand-up meetings.

Wrote and edited technical design document including documentation requirements and style guide.
Developed module for detecting and responding to mouse and touch screen input in the scratch and streak scenes.
Extended functionality of Yarn Spinner tools to add support for dialogue tracking between scripts.
Built systems to handle scene transitions and initialization from Scriptable Objects.
Worked alongside programming team to implement multi-stage NPC interactions using UnityEvents and Yarn Spinner dialogue.
Conducted code reviews and managed team bug board.
Tracked code team progress using JIRA.

Writing

Wrote, edited, and implemented non-tutorial dialogue for each of the game's NPCs. Used Yarn Spinner to create branching and reactive dialogue that interfaced with objects in Unity through code.

Designed NPC dialogue trees.
Gave each character their own names and speech quirks.
Implemented dialogue using industry-standard Unity plugin software Yarn Spinner.
Copy edited tutorial dialogue written by other team members.

An image of Visual Studio Code, with a Yarn Spinner dialogue tree open in the right panel and code open in the left panel.

A dialogue tree from the game's second level. Implemented using Visual Studio Code and Yarn Spinner, with visual scripting used to track the tree.

Acknowledgements

A photo of the Rock Hunting with Mohs team, standing in front of the game's carnival booth at MacDonough elementary school. They have their arms around each other's shoulders, and are smiling.

Rock Hunting with Mohs would not have been possible without every member of our incredible team: Shannon Lin, Leigh Allen, Tim Goggin, Maze Labowitz, and myself. Special thanks to Professor Weaver, Jesse Herrnson, and Reilly Manton for their wisdom and advice during the development process.

Alex Kaplan

Game Designer and Programmer