Overview

Photoshoot From Hell is a co-op Kinect experience where players inhabit models in a hellish fashion show. Unfortunately, there is an infestation of creepy crawlies in the studio that threaten to ruin the photographs. The models must shake their bones to rid shoo away the creepies in time to pose for the camera.

ROLE: Game Designer, Artist, Producer, Voice Actor

TEAM: 5 Members- 2 artist, 2 programmers, 1 sound designer

DURATION: 1 Weeks

PLATFORM: Kinect 2

CLIENT: Building Virtual Worlds class at CMU's ETC

TOOLS: Unity, Maya, Photoshop

Contributions

As game designer, I devised the gameplay mechanics, and world concept. I also assisted the programmers with playtesting and balancing.

As artist, I modeled the environment in Maya, textured in substance painter, and added lighting and fire particles in Unity. In addition, I designed and modeled the UI elements. I also, designed the masks applied to the photos taken on the finish screen.

As Producer for the experience, I planned meetings and kept tabs on the team to meet our deadline.

Design

The assigned theme for this round of BVW was simple: FUN. The initial concept first came to me while watching a tech demo for the Kinect 2 right after we were assigned the platform. The demo showed the skeleton that is mapped to the user. I wrote down a simple note: “Spooky Skeleton Dance Party”. When I pitched the idea to the team, we all immediately liked the goofy potential of the idea. In an effort to subvert the typical pose mirror game trope, we decided to make a pose game where the game actively tried to keep you from matching the pose. From this base, we added a bit of inspiration from RuPaul’s Drag Race and Voguing culture and Photoshoot from Hell was born.

The basic gameplay loop included a period where spiders spawned on random locations on the players’ skeletons. The player is then encouraged to shake their limbs to get the spiders off. The kinect tracked the velocity of the limbs to determine a successful movement then, if successful, the spiders fall off. As the shoot goes on, the amount of creepies increases, eventually reaching comically large amounts. If the guest manages to clear the shot before posing they are rewarded with a FAB score, otherwise they are DRAB. At the end of the shoot, the guests are shown on the cover of two magazines, TORTURE for a fab run, or HELL, a tabloid, for drab. Finally, in a fun wink to the guest, we show a secretly recorded video of themselves swinging their arms around like fools, almost always with a goofy smile, with the credits overlaid. The chaos on screen, combined with the innate fun of waving your arms around like a fool, resulted in a fun, funny, and fabulous experience I am extremely proud of.

At the end of the semester, Photoshoot from Hell was showcased at the annual ETC Festival.