Operator Operator! Dev Log 1

Operator Operator! is a game that I'm developing alongside a few close game-dev friends. The game is a 3D adventure-puzzle game that places you in a mysterious labyrinthian manor armed with nothing but your wit and an archaic cell phone that can be used to affect the environment. In this dev log, I want to post a little bit about the process we've been doing and show off some of the work.

The Team

I want to first give credit to everyone that has helped out with the project so far. Here's the current Three Horses team roster as of this dev log:

• Cailyn Talamonti - UI/UX

Cailyn has been a godsend. She's made time from her schedule to help us block out some of the screens and UI styles for the project, as well as helping us find the vibe for the game.

• Connor Wolf - Creative Director, Design/Implementation

This is me! I've been working to keep the project organized and on track, and have also been blocking out our puzzle designs and functionality.

• Jake Hyland - Narrative/Audio

Jake is an absolute baller when it comes to narrative and audio. I've worked with Jake on several projects in the past, and he always nails the vibe 100%.

• Julia Ngyuen - 3D Art

Julia has been our go-to for all of our props and environment. She's incredibly talented, and we're all super lucky to have her on the team.

• Kat King - Producer, UX

Kat has done an amazing job keeping everyone on track and keeping us organized. On top of her production work, she also helps us with our overall UX.

• Luke Goldfain - Design/Implementation

Luke is like a Swiss-Army knife of development. It seems like anything that gets thrown his way is handled in a snap and wrapped up before you know it.

• Melvin McElrath - 2D Art

Melvin is our amazing 2D artist, focusing on concept art, illustrations, and really anything else we need. He's super open to learning new styles, and we're lucky to have him.

Individual Explorations

To kick off our team, I had everyone do exercises that I called Individual Explorations. This process took a few months, and essentially consisted of our team doing tiny tiny tiny prototypes of art-styles, mechanics, drafts, or sometimes just vibe exercises. We then as a team went through these explorations and decided on some of the ones that we liked.

This process was a ton of fun, and I'm really glad I suggested it. People got the opportunity to basically just play around and do show-and-tell for a few weeks, and it was a really awesome way to get everyone working creatively together and determining what we'd all like to work on.

Pay attention to this one!

In a lot of my explorations, I realized that I kept coming back to games about mystery and intrigue. I had played quite a few of those games recently, and so those mechanics of discovery were really sticking out in my mind. Games like Tunic, The Return of the Obra Dinn, The Outer Wilds, and Lorelai and the Laser Eyes had really left an impression on me due to their unique relationships with player knowledge.

This one too!

We passed a lot of explorations back and forth, and eventually started to nail down a few game pitches. From these game pitches (our 3 horses in the race, hence the group name), we decided on trying to make Operator Operator! The game would revolve around a detective trying to solve a mystery with a heavy emphasis on unique cell phone numbers.

Sequences and Elements

A large portion of the game currently revolves around a feature I programmed called Sequences and Elements. Essentially, Sequences are lists of Elements. Elements can be any kind of string sent from an Element Emitter. The player's phone is a Sequence Emitter, and will send a message out to any registered Sequence Listeners to see if an inputted Sequence matches a target Sequence.

Sequence Sequence Sequence, Element Element Element. Lots of words back to back. What does this actually mean? Essentially, I programmed in a way for us to make customizable phone buttons and phone numbers. We don't have to use just numbers, we can also use things like letters, symbols, emojis, sounds, really anything we want. Our "phone numbers" can use any of the things that can appear on a button. So while "1234-5678" is a valid Sequence, so is "Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do."

I divided up a classification chart for designers to use that separates our Sequences into three types: Pure Sequences, Cypher Sequences, and Environmental Sequences. There's a bit of overlap between them but this is a general description of them:

• Pure Sequence

A straight series of symbols that the player finds and can input using buttons. As an example, "1234-5678" is a Pure Sequence. They require little brainpower. Find Sequence, input Sequence.

• Cypher Sequence

A series of symbols that need to be translated using a Legend. These symbols might not actually exist as buttons for the phone, and instead need to be transcribed to be used.

"(>.<) (O_O) (q_q) (owo)" might look like a series of emoticons, but with a "Cool Guide to Tweenspeak" pamphlet, you might be able to translate them into numbers or words.

• Environmental Sequence

A Sequence that is hidden in the physical world. Unlike the other two Sequence types, this Sequence does not exist in any sort of handout. Instead, a player needs to observe their environment and recognize the pattern in the world around them.

With these three types of Sequences, I drafted a blockout of a Vertical Slice puzzle flow. We're still working hard to get the Vertical Slice all implemented, but the team has been doing an amazing job. These puzzles have been incredibly fun to design, because we have a lot of freedom in how to approach them.

I've also created a number of Sequence Actions that occur when a Sequence Listener registers a match from the player's phone. These Actions let us do things like open doors, start dialogue, spawn items, and lots of other REALLY cool things. I purposely made the whole system take advantage of Unity's Component system, and so everything is nice and decoupled, making it easy to implement puzzles as we want to try them.

Final Thoughts

I've had an absolute blast working on the project so far. We've all been doing a lot of research into these knowledge-based games, and identifying how we can make that moment of discovery feel really satisfying. My hope is to have it in front of some playtesters soon, as that's currently my big worry. Making a mystery game like this means I want people to be confused, but not so confused that they become frustrated. There's a certain line to tow there, and I'm sure we'll discover it in the near future.