DEMONS FOR DUMMIES

DEMONS FOR DUMMIES

DEMONS FOR DUMMIES

Team

Sheridan College's Fall 2025 Design week

My Role

UX Designer, Team Lead

Tools

Unity, Asprite, Miro

Date

October 2025

Team

Sheridan College's Fall 2025 Design week

My Role

UX Designer, Team Lead

Tools

Unity, Asprite, Miro

Date

October 2025

Team

Sheridan College's Fall 2025 Design week

My Role

UX Designer, Team Lead

Tools

Unity, Asprite, Miro

Date

October 2025

KEY POINTS

  • Guided project scope and ensured each member had a fair amount of work to complete that played to their strengths.

  • Designed a playtesting protocol and used it to verify the team's design direction.

  • Worked closely with designers and programmers to ensure the overall game experience flowed smoothly from puzzle-to-puzzle.

KEY POINTS

  • Guided project scope and ensured each member had a fair amount of work to complete that played to their strengths.

  • Designed a playtesting protocol and used it to verify the team's design direction.

  • Worked closely with designers and programmers to ensure the overall game experience flowed smoothly from puzzle-to-puzzle.

KEY POINTS

  • Guided project scope and ensured each member had a fair amount of work to complete that played to their strengths.

  • Designed a playtesting protocol and used it to verify the team's design direction.

  • Worked closely with designers and programmers to ensure the overall game experience flowed smoothly from puzzle-to-puzzle.

OVERVIEW

Built as part of a program-wide game jam at Sheridan College, Demons for Dummies is a 2-player asymmetric puzzle game utilizing an alternative controller. play as either a master wizard or a foolish apprentice as you attempt to seal away a demon in a box. Be careful! take too long, and the demon will escape to wreak havoc upon the world (and you)!

See Demons for Dummies in Action!

DESIGN PROCESS

This design week had a unique challenge: create a game using an alternative controller. This initially felt like an impossible hurdle, because none of our team had any knowledge of electronics, or were even much of an expert in programming at all. To overcome this, we utilized a Makey Makey, which was essential to our success. the Makey Makey was already set up with basic button presses when a circut was completed, making it easy to map to Unity.

Take a look at the inside of our controller above.

We also struggled quite a bit with theming. There were some very easy ideas we could've latched on to in the ideating phase of prototyping, but I knew other teams were bound to come to similar conclusions and wanted to differentiate the project

Here's a screenshot of one early idea.

Early on, we thought about making a 'bomb defusal' game like Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, but after some feedback from other teams, we pivoted to radically different theming. We took the original idea, 'Bomb defusal', and added fantasy elements, re-imaging the existing mechanics (like pressing buttons in certain orders) in a new context. buttons became runes. The bomb defusal guide became an arcane book of spells, and so on.

We developed our idea further, using premade assets to save time and communicate the theme.

PLAYTESTING

It's not surprising that with an unconventional controller, there was a lot to be learned from playtesting. When we began informally playtesting the finished game at the end of design week, I observed some issues almost immediately. Due to the short development time, we were missing something critical: player feedback. The player with the controller never knew when they were performing an action that was effective, and the player with the computer couldn't tell when an incorrect button sequence was being pressed. The communication load on the players not only proved to be too much for most, but was also frustrating.

PLAY-TESTING

It's not surprising that with an unconventional controller, there was a lot to be learned from playtesting. When we began informally playtesting the finished game at the end of design week, I observed some issues almost immediately. Due to the short development time, we were missing something critical: player feedback. The player with the controller never knew when they were performing an action that was effective, and the player with the computer couldn't tell when an incorrect button sequence was being pressed. The communication load on the players not only proved to be too much for most, but was also frustrating.

LEARNINGS

This project emphasized the importantance of testing early and often, and drove home the value held in prototyping, even prototyping unsucessfully. Demons For Dummies was an experiment, and if our team had decided to extend the prototype into a whole game, it would've been a major stepping stone. Learning this will help me critically in the long run, and prevent me from overinvesting into untried ideas.

LEARN-INGS

This project emphasized the importantance of testing early and often, and drove home the value held in prototyping, even prototyping unsucessfully. Demons For Dummies was an experiment, and if our team had decided to extend the prototype into a whole game, it would've been a major stepping stone. Learning this will help me critically in the long run, and prevent me from overinvesting into untried ideas.