Malware.exe
About
It was a not-so regular weekday in the year 2007. You wake up, excited to start your school’s home based learning day. Unfortunately, you come across some malware, seemingly bent on wrecking havoc on your student life.
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Experience a blast from the past and fend off the onslaught of viruses with your masterful clicks, in this parody simulation game.
Project details
TotallyNotMalware was done during my Final Year at DigiPen Singapore in a team of 2.
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The game was developed fully in the Unity Engine, in a span of 3 months.
What I brought to the team
Ideation
Documentation
Prototyping and Development (Unity, C#)
As a final-year project, we were allowed to work on any interactive project of our choice. Due to scope concerns my teammate and I decided to work on a short game experience - taking this as an opportunity to push ourselves, try out different ideas and land on a polished experience.
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Contributions:
Ideation and design of core concept, mechanics and systems
Pitch documentation
Designed "Level"/Game flow
Programmed and implemented secondary systems/mechanics and game progression
Helping to source and implement sound effects
Ideation and Documentation
As we were working as a pair - we did most of our ideation together. This was done over multiple sessions of brainstorming and iteration.
Using flowcharts and other design tools helped us to visualise our game better and allowed us to lend on a sensible game flow and progression.
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In typical game dev fashion, would quickly prototype ideas and iterate on them as and when things changed. This allowed us to test out ideas and spot issues early, without committing to anything yet.
Old Gameloop
One notable change was leaning into wacky chaos as one of our core game pillars. Initially, we wanted to have players complete a series of "homework" while fending off malware - capturing the essence of chaotic multitasking.
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Old "Level 3" Homework Flow
However, we eventually felt that having 2 main goals simultaneously was too challenging, and often took away from the focus of what was truly engaging - fending off the malware themselves.
This change allowed us to lean in on the chaotic and ridiculousness of the malware, and even additional mechanics like having a score system for game feel, and having an OS mascot acting as a self-aware comedic source.
Chaos from Malware
Prototyping and Development
Prototyping and development was done in Unity. By using Unity's tools, we were able to quickly prototype ideas, quickly testing and iterating on the game's mechanics.
Early prototype
Below are some specific areas of implementation I worked on.
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A score system was added to add to the game feel, giving appropriate feedback on combating each malware - similar to bullet hell/beat em up games. Closing or "Attacking" the malware window via clicking the X button will cause the window to flash red and add to the "CLICKS" counter. This was achieved using Unity's UI System, Animation and C# Scripting.
Score system
Various parts of the game would contain in-game cutscenes, which added to the humour aspect of our game. We ended up using Unity's Timeline tool, which allowed both of us to make tight adjustments without altering any additional code. (as opposed to calling each animation manually) I used the timeline to call functions, animations and sound effects, using it like a video editing tool, to create all the in game cutscenes.
Using Unity Timeline tools for cutscenes
Command Prompt Malware cutscene