Imvi: Echoes of Harmony
Game & Systems Designer // 23 Devs // Unreal Engine 5.4
PC // 18 Weeks / 270 Hours
Game Synopsis
Imvi: Echoes of Harmony is a third-person, single-player, open world experience in the spirit of Journey and ABZÛ. In Imvi, harness the attractive & repulsive energies of Black & White Singularities to sling yourself across & interact with an alien, wonder-filled, shattered world. Waking up with no memories, Imvi must learn to navigate an unfamiliar world while guided by an unknown mentor. By collecting Memory Shards scattered across a sweeping landscape of floating islands, Imvi embarks on an odyssey to discover the world…and herself.
Responsibilities
Developing
Core Mechanics
Led the development of core mechanics & systems for a slow, experiential game
Teaching the Player
Focused on teaching the game while crafting the “First 5 Minutes” to support players
Guiding the Game
Upheld & iterated central game pillars & loops while interfacing with stakeholders
Design Process & Iteration
Developing Core Mechanics
After several rounds of pitches, our stakeholders greenlit a game featuring the use of black & white singularities: one that attracts, and one that repels. Especially inspired by “gravity slingshots” in media such as Interstellar and The Martian, I was excited about the idea of players using their singularities to reach new heights - both literally and figuratively!
We frequently returned to real-world physics when discussing our mechanics, with the important caveat of “it’s more important to be fun than accurate”!
Given our tight development timeline of only 18 weeks, we quickly spent 4 weeks prototyping and “finding the fun” before beginning our two week sprints. I quickly settled on setting the game in a shattered world of floating islands, allowing us to take full advantage of the Z-axis, verticality, and gravity shifts (more on this later!).
In this rapid prototyping phase, we began developing the core mechanics of the black & white singularities, exploring everything we could do with push & pull mechanics, as well as gravity & orientation shifts.
About halfway through development, we made a key iteration of simplifying throwing and recalling the singularities.
Our original control scheme & gravity was much less precise than our final iteration,
contributing to players feeling out of control
While I originally designed these to give the player as much control as possible, we found through playtesting that this made the singularities difficult to use effectively: there was too much cognitive load on players. Instead, we pivoted to a simplified control scheme with a fixed throw distance and auto-recall feature. This allowed for greater player agency and control as they fly around the world!
Simplifying our singularities allowed players to master them sooner while
making it easier to explore the world around them
Another important change came when we reduced our world’s gravity to be almost zero - like flying through a void. This gave the player a safety net as they mastered the singularities while exploring the world, as well as helped create the slow, intentional experience I was pursuing.
When developing our high-level mechanics, I always returned to our
pillars of a slow & wonder-filled world
Guiding the Game
As the game designer, it was my job to be the “keeper of the vision” for the game: to come up with fun ideas that worked within our game pillars, loops, and scope. As we iterated throughout development, I made sure that stakeholders were informed about our progress and any key changes as we worked to “find the fun”. This was partially done through always keeping our pillars & loops in mind as I made decision decisions.
Zen, Relaxed, Fluid
Experience
Relaxed & Rhythmic
Movement
Wonder-Filled
Exploration
One of my most critical decisions came after our First Playable milestone when we pivoted from a puzzle/platformer to an experience along the lines of Journey and ABZÛ. While we initially were modeling half our game around Zelda ‘puzzle temples’, we found that our singularities did not offer precise control, and as a result, our early action blocks were cumbersome and frustrating.
[Temple Footage]
Conversely, early playtests revealed that players were responding positively to the potential of our shattered open world that allowed the players the space and freedom to use the singularities and gravity to their full potential.
This was not a decision that was made lightly, but ultimately proved to be a good move for the game. Thanks to some smart planning and problem-solving alongside my rockstar producers, we were able to control our scope while building on the fun of the game: taking in and traversing the beautiful world.
[Memory Crystal Footage]
Teaching the Game
As the game designer, most of my focus once the design was headed in the right direction was teaching it to players! While we wanted to leave room for players to discover the world around them, we worked hard to make sure we were supporting them along their journey. As a result, the tutorial went through several iterations.
[Tutorial Footage]
Production Process
Communication
My primary responsibility was to communicate the game’s direction to 23 developers - roughly half of which were not native English speakers. As a result, I worked hard to communicate in whatever way was needed for the team: quick sketches, whiteboard explanations, Jira, videobashing, PowerPoints…no communication method was off the table!
The producers and I organized frequent “Show and Tells” to communicate
updates and celebrate team achievements
While communication is always among the most challenging aspects of any creative endeavor, this process hammered home the need to be as clear, concise, and efficient as possible. Additionally, my producers and I realized the need for thorough Conditions of Satisfaction (maintained in Jira) to keep the production pipeline moving.
I created and maintained a Game Design Doc (GDD) that held both the high-level concepts for the game as well as in-depth implementation details
I created several design guides for our internal Wiki to help our world feel cohesive
Inspired by my time in the theatre industry, I conducted several "Note the Game" sessions where I did full playthroughs noting every little detail before prioritizing with our producers
Our rockstar producers maintained our Jira board; I worked hard to create clear Conditions of Satisfaction to ensure our team knew their responsibilities
I utilized Miro as a "virtual whiteboard" & design hub so that every discipline had visibility into what others were working on
Managing Scope
If communication is the most difficult thing in game development, scope is the second. Given our particularly tight production timeline of only 18 weeks, scope was a constant concern throughout development.
As one of the team leads, I was among those primarily responsible for managing the game’s scope. This led to tough, but important decisions throughout development. In addition to the above discussion of cutting puzzle temples to focus on our open world exploration, I had to make a similar call about our art load.
We originally pitched three unique biomes that players could explore; however, by the start of our Vertical Slice milestone, we realized this would not be feasible given our extremely limited art resources (no matter how our artists are - we worked to avoid crunching as much as possible!).
I led the team in taking our favourite elements from each of our pitched biomes to create a single, cohesive “franken-biome” that our entire world could take place in. By being intentional with our asset requests, we were able to give the level designers a beautiful palette to construct the world while working within our constraints.
Concept art by Haonan Zhang
As a team lead, one of my largest responsibilities was to keep our stakeholders informed of our progress. Our development cycle was in two-week sprints, so it was important to communicate how we were “finding the fun”, as well as receive and apply their feedback.
In particular, I was a unified front with our two co-producers as we managed the high-level process. We worked hard to communicate effectively with the team, and tell them “why” we were making the decisions we did as much as possible. Facilitating the communication between the team’s work with the stakeholder’s guidance was perhaps our most important task!
Working with Stakeholders & Producers
Post-Mortem
What Went Well
Agile Development
From our initial pitch as a gravity-based puzzle/platformer to our final iteration of a slow, intentional experience, we remained agile throughout development to “find the fun”
A Unique Experience
I’m very proud of developing an unconventional game: one that asks the player to slow down and take in the beauty of the world around them
What Went Wrong
Resisting the Game
Early on, I felt a great deal of pressure to have “enough” mechanics and enhancers for players to remain active. However, many of these ended up feeling forced as more the concept was fleshed out. We were able to pivot effectively, but I wish I had started with the idea of “let the game be what it is”: arbitrarily forcing in mechanics isn’t necessary or a good use of resources
What I Learned
Simplicity & Precision
While my early iterations of the singularity mechanic offered a great number of options for players, they were difficult to use. The game really took off when we simplified the singularity & gravity mechanics. In a similar vein, I learned the importance for movement mechanic to have an element of precision to facilitate player control and mastery.
Communicate the Why
As the person with “the idea”, as well as being in the middle of many high-level discussion with stakeholders, producers, leads, and teammates, I was sorting through a great deal of information. I learned that it’s important to explain “why” I made decisions as much as possible in order to foster trust across the development pipeline.
Trailer
Gallery
