Yumeko

Yumeko

In Yumeko, players take on the role of a hospitalized child’s maneki-neko (aka lucky cat) plushie who comes to life in the child’s dreams. In those dreams, you carry the child on your back and take him on adventures; where you fight off the troubling manifestations of his subconscious and help him overcome mental challenges. As the game progresses, you help transform the child’s nightmares into a bright and pleasant dream.

Gameplay

The gameplay is a 2.5D side-scroller. It focuses on puzzles and platforming with some Mario-inspired combat. You play in an Okami-stylized world that begins rather dark in order to represent the nightmares the child character faces in an uncertain world of prolonged stays in hospitals. Progression, and a sense of reward, are given to the player by visual feedback; the stages of the level become visibly brighter, as does a lantern hanging from the tail of the cat avatar. The puzzles include interactable elements such as pushable objects, pressure plates, and doors.

Target Audience

Yumeko is for 10-12-year-olds with mobility issues. It’s designed with the Xbox Adaptive Controller as the player’s interface and playable with only one functioning limb. The game is for those who enjoy a cognitive challenge.

Our Process

We produced Yumeko as part of the 3-week Game Project 1. A major component of this game project was accessibility and how to use the Xbox Adaptive Controller in a creative manner. Additionally, we had to integrate these concepts into the theme of Dreams. Using this controller instead of a mouse and keyboard (or even a standard controller) challenged us to approach our design from a different perspective. You could say that getting our puzzle-platformer finished was quite the puzzle itself.

Given the time constraints - and the nature of the project -  we had to narrow our focus very quickly. To ensure we could meet the deadline, our process included daily updates in the form of a 10 am Stand Up, where we discussed what we achieved the day before and what we planned to achieve on the current day. We also used Trello to manage Scrum tasks. These tasks were color-coded based on the program (designer, programmers, or animators/VFX) and initials to denote who was responsible for which task. As a managing tool aside, it created a simple, visual method for reviewing what still needed to be done (and to celebrate when a task had been moved to the Done column). 

Members

Adam Lindqvist - Designer

Kaan Tsuchiya - Designer

Anton Vikström - Designer

Tomi Välitalo - Designer

Tristan Berglund - Designer

Carl-Mikael Bergbom - Programmer

Anton Idehed - Programmer

Erik Kubershtein - Programmer

William Smitt - Programmer

Kevin Bragg - Animator/VFX Artist

Nilufer Yagci - Animator/VFX Artist