Pillow Heights
Overview
Pillow Heights is a Time Management game, similar to Diner Dash, where the player plays as a pillow hotel manager that must help their pillow guests stay well rested during their hotel stay.
While taking the course Game Mechanics II at Full Sail University, I was tasked with creating a game in under a month with the theme "Playing Both Sides." To fit the theme, I designed a game player plays as a pillow that can flip to a hot or cold side to give them different advantages based on their current task when managing the hotel.
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Project Details
Role
Team Size
Duration
Engine
Platform
Skills Gained
Overall
Game Design
Scripting
Other
Sleeping Guests
The player serves pillow guests in their hotel. Once a pillow arrives, the player drags and drops them into a room with an empty bed. Overtime the guest will sleep in their room and will request to be flipped by the player to continue sleeping.
When a pillow is requesting to be flipped, the player will go to the guest's room and play a flipping minigame to help the pillow go back to sleep. Depending on the side the player is on when flipping the guest, decides how long the guest will sleep without requesting another flip.
Once the pillow is fully rested, the pillow will check out of the hotel and their room will be empty.
Guest's Patience
As the guests are making requests, their patience will gradually decrease. A guests's patience will decrease when waiting to be checked into a room, waiting to be flipped, and waiting to be checked out.
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Once a guest has checked out, the player will receive money based on the amount of patience they had at the time of check out. If the guest's patience runs out, the guest will leave the hotel and the player will lose money,
Hot and Cold Sides
While the player is maneuvering through the hotel, they will be playing on the Hot or Cold side of their Pillow.
Hot Side - Move Faster throughout Level
Cold Side - Guests Sleep Longer without Interruption
The different sides of the pillow help the player manage their time by being able to reach guests faster or helping guests sleep longer which cause the pillows to leave the rooms faster.
Playtesting and Feedback
Throughout this class, every week we had to conduct playtests for the states of our game and update the results from the playtests in our Game Design Documents resulting in 3 playtesting sessions.
Week 1 Playtesting
After the first set of the playtests, I noticed the players were not using the Hot and Cold mechanic since the rooms in the level were very close to one another, the playtesters did not feel a need to move faster and switch to the hot side of the pillow because of the level layout.
Week 2 Playtesting
After receiving feedback from the first playtests. I changed the level layout and changed the Hot and Cold mechanic to be activated on UI Button click instead of Right Click. To increase difficulty in time management, I added a room with 2 Beds and made pillows in groups of two only be able to check into the rooms with 2 beds.
After my second set of playtests, I noticed the playtesters would repeatedly click on doors, even though their pillow was moving towards the door they clicked on. I also found the playtesters would freeze very often and not do any new tasks for a while when new guests spawned and all of the rooms were taken.
This made me realize I needed to add feedback to when a door was clicked, like a checkmark to show the player, their pillow is on the way to that room. I also realized I needed to find a balance between the average guest's sleep cycle and the spawn timers of new guests.
Week 3 Playtesting
After receiving feedback from the first playtests. I added a yellow box with a green checkmark to appear right beside a door is clicked. This box will go away once the player reaches that door. I also created different types of pillows with different sleep timers and patience. This led me to create a spreadsheet to list out the different pillow types patience timers and sleep timers to make sure the pillow types different timers felt different and to balance the game along with the wave timers.
I introduced 2 new pillows at the beginning of each level. I also noticed the hot side was still used more and some players were not aware that flipping pillows while their cold helped the guests sleep longer. This led me to implement text popping up saying "Sleep Bonus" in a chilling font after the player has flipped the pillow while they were cold. I changed the shape of the player's pillow and added a cute bellhop hat and changed the colors of the guests to make it easier to differentiate between the player and the guests. I also added more props in the levels to make it feel more like a hotel.
After my third set of playtests, I noticed the playtesters would stay on the hot side more towards the end of the level when more guests were in the hotel. Also based on the feedback I got, it seemed like the playtesters really enjoyed the variety of pillow types. This made me realize the hot side of the pillow needed to be on a timer and the player should only be able to move fast for a certain amount of time. The feedback also made me want to introduce different pillow types that affect other pillows. For example, a heart pillow that increases everyone's patience if they are in line with it.
Researching & Reiterating
While Creating this game, I took a lot of reference to many Diner Dash games for the drag and drop of the hotel guests, the guest's patience bar, and for the movement of the player. I took reference to specifically Hotel Dash in the series for the aesthetic of the game, the hotel layout, and the music that plays throughout the game.
For the start and end screens, I took reference to Diner Dash, Sally Spa, and Cake Mania when explaining to the player the goal for that level and how well they did at the end of the level.
