This Side Up

This Side Up is a gyroscope-driven first-person stealth game that has the player sneak their way around a warehouse using a custom box controller and mobile phone. Using the gyroscope controls, the player can tilt the box controller in different ways to move around the warehouse which they can see from a first-person perspective on the phone’s screen. The objective of the game is to quickly navigate the warehouse, collect your belongings and leave before time runs out and without getting caught by the surveillance drone.

Conception

Originally conceptualized during a college game jam, This Side Up was a gameplay idea that I came up with in a small time-span that had no shortage of risks and unknowns.

Development

My role as a designer and general programmer during the production of This Side Up had me designing and coding important gameplay components like the surveillance drone, the mobile gyroscope controls, and the user interface elements. Being the one who pitched the idea, I had to solve many unknowns along the way that no one else in the group could solve. I needed to quickly learn how to build mobile apps with Unity, test the game with Unity Remote for rapid iteration, and utilize the gyroscope API in Unity in order to make a gyroscope controller that was appropriate for our alternative controller.