“An ‘endless faller’ with an educational twist”

The design process

Concepting the construction site

With Construction Site Chaos my team had the job to make an educative but playful experience for construction site workers. I started the creative process by arranging multiple interviews with local construction site workers, to get a better understanding of their environment and what kind of games they like to play. It turned out that only the younger workers are really into (arcade) games, so we decided to focus on that target group when having a brainstorm session with the team later on. I pitched an idea of an endless faller to the team, which became Construction Site Chaos later on. It already featured the scanning of real-life gear to gain more points in the game. My original one pager can be found below.

View original onepager

Construction Site Chaos brainstorm session

Managing the team

In order for the idea to work out, we needed people working on the game itself, but also on the physical installation where the game will be showcased in as well as a mobile app that accompanies the game. I had the leading role in this and needed to make sure the communication between all departments went right and deadlines were made. Next to that, I did some art for the game myself and created the “Fatty” character, who was designed to be one of the side characters in the game.

Modeling and designing

I ended up modeling and animating the “Fatty” character for the game, as well as tweaking some of the games design values to make sure we hit the right difficulty curve with Construction Site Chaos: easy to learn, hard to master and highly addictive. The key in the core loop of the game was of course to let players scan their gear and then get back to the game to be able to score more points. Getting a fair benefit for players who had their gear in the game was also one of my design responsibilities.

All contributors

Project lead: Daniël Wewerinke
Management: Anika Boelhouwer, Daniël Wewerinke, Lindy Damen
Programming: Marco Rothering
Character design: Lindy Damen, Daniël Wewerinke
Environment design: Anika Boelhouwer, Rosana Herrera, Max Klostermann
GUI & app design: Alejandra Victoria, Galina Petrova, Zachary Ruan
Installation building: Rafael Bressan, Anika Boelhouwer, Galina Petrova, Alejandra Victoria
Soundtrack & intro: Max Klostermann
Instruction video: Rafael Bressan, Anika Boelhouwer
Advertising (print): Alejandra Victoria
Advertising (trailer): Daniël Wewerinke

Construction Site Chaos (2013)
– Type: Serious game (Installation art)
– Contributions: 3D art, project management
– Created in ca. 2,5 months

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About
The goal with Construction Site Chaos was to create a game that makes construction site workers aware of the dangers that can occur when not using their safety equipment at work. After intensive research, we decided to make an arcade game in the form of an endless runner. Or, “endless faller” in our case. In the game you control a construction site worker that falls off a building. By steering left and right, you need to avoid hitting other employees, so they don’t all end up falling down with him. Once hitting five other people, it’s game over and your highscore will be displayed in the arcade machine in the canteen of the construction site. This way, we wanted to make the game short, addicting and highly competitive.

The educational side is subliminal. The game itself is cartoony and over-the-top, but features real-life facts on health and safety accidents on construction sites. For the extra educational twist, we created an app that goes along with the game and its arcade machine. By scanning real-life safety equipment like boots and helmets, the items will be saved on the players profile and will appear in the game as power-ups. For example, if the player uses the app to make a picture of himself wearing (marked) boots, the boots will appear in the game and the player can use their ability to generate a force field. Only big highcores can be reached by using all the real-life atributes and getting rewarded with in-game items. You can also use the app to scan items of the day (like emergency exit routes) or send pictures of missing items on the construction site to your boss to score extra points in the arcade game.

3D
Animations
Concept art
Game design
Team manager