OctoCorss

Game Overview

OctoCross is a full body motion controlled arcade scoring game where you use your arms and legs to organize fast paced traffic through a series of broken bridges in a city of monster vehicles.

My Work

In OctoCross, I was the game designer in charge of level design, difficulty tuning, building the game with Unity, and creating a few small systems.

This was the first game project I worked on. A lot of our early ideas didn’t make it into the final game, so during the four-month development period, we focused mainly on adjusting the game’s difficulty and length in the later stages. Thankfully, even without those extra features, players who tested the game during playtests and at Level Up still found the motion-controlled gameplay really fun.

OctoCross on itch.io

Each vehicle had its own speed and weight. We originally planned to add more types of vehicles, including planes and boats—some would act as obstacles the player had to avoid, while others would have special abilities that could help the player. Our goal was to make the gameplay more fun and challenging, while keeping a bit of chaos.

The normal car

Enemy car needs to be stopped

Ambulance can heal player when passes

Toward the end of development, we had designed three additional levels, but due to time constraints, one of them didn’t make it into the final game.

Color switch

After some time two random tunnels will switch colors.

Moving bridge

Bridges start moving.

Lighting

Scene will become darker, while lighting will strike sometime to light up the scene.

During playtests, we noticed that players felt tired after holding their arms up for extended periods while playing. So we originally planned to include short rest segments between levels to give players a chance to stretch. However, since each player only had a few minutes to try the game at Level Up, we decided to compress the entire experience into two and a half minutes—just enough time for them to experience the full game and walk away with sore shoulders.

The game was developed in Unity, using TrackforAll’s webcam-based motion tracking solution. As long as players have a webcam, they can play the game at home on their own computers. We originally considered building a full setup with Arduino and physical devices, but ultimately decided that if the game could be played easily with just a webcam and a computer, it would significantly lower the barrier to entry.

At Level Up, we were thrilled to see how much people enjoyed our game. Players of all ages were able to have fun with it—from young kids still in elementary school to grandma in their seventies. One player even played from a wheelchair. Seeing that made us incredibly happy!

There was a lot of chaos in making our first game, but seeing everyone have such a great time made it all feel totally worth it.

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