Dumb Ways To Survive is a casual-friendly survival-adventure game for Netflix Games on mobile set in the Dumb Ways To Die universe. The game stars Noob, a lost bean scout who has crashed his Campervan in the wilderness and must venture forth to gather resources, craft equipment and find the parts he needs to repair his Campervan and get back home!​​
​
I joined the team in February 2023 as my first project at PlaySide Studios, taking responsibility for the level and content design of the project from pre-production all the way to live ops. The game released to positive acclaim in April 2024, being downloaded over 1 million times and even winning Excellence in Mobile at the 2024 ADGAs!
Developer: PlaySide Studios
​
Platform: Netflix Mobile
​
Genre: Survival-Adventure
​
Years Developed: 2023-2024
​
Roles:
-
Game Designer
-
Level Designer
​
Software Used:
-
Unity
-
Fork/Gitlab
-
Confluence
-
Jira
-
Miro
Designing survival systems for a casual audience
It was crucial that our systems supported a more casual-friendly audience while still making sure the game maintained its identity as being a survival-adventure title. I collaborated closely with the design team to design systems catered towards our target audience, some examples of my contributions including:
​
-
The Campervan - Noob's base camp and the focal point of the game's objective, the campervan serves as a spot to store excess resources as well as to rest up and skip nighttime. The player can also craft with resources not in their Backpack if they're close to the Campervan, a system we implemented to improve convenience.
-
Safe Spots - Respites in the world where players are safe and can equip Badges, repair equipment and purchase goods and upgrades from the Mysterious Traveler.
-
Badge system - Badges are passive abilities the players can equip to gain unique abilities. Some of the badges I designed include Indestructible Instruments (prevents tools from breaking when their durability reaches zero) and Supreme Storage (automatically moves excess resources to the Campervan), both designed to streamline survival systems that caused friction with casual players.
-
Shortcuts - Our levels had block-based puzzles and repairable bridges allowing players to create paths back to previous areas. This served as both a reward for players reaching further points in the level, as well as to evoke a sense of mastery in gradually overcoming each level and making its exploration easier.
Developing levels intended for longer play sessions
My primary responsibility on the project was to create four levels (and a later fifth for live ops) that were casual-friendly and could each support a few hours of gameplay. To achieve this I first developed level design and content plans in Miro. These outlined the general structure and feel I wanted to build out for the level, as well as all of the resources, creatures and puzzle elements I wanted to include. I would present these to the design team to get buy-in, collaborating with them to ensure we all had what we needed before presenting the aligned vision to our game lead.
Once each plan was approved, I moved onto building out the level and its puzzles using tilemap tools and in-house systems to implement gameplay and objective functionality. The levels went through multiple iterations based on playtesting results until I was satisfied with its structure and player experience. At this point I collaborated closely with the art team to populate the levels with vibrant art to evoke the classic Dumb Ways charm, as well as to help signpost players in the right direction.
​
Collaborating with the design team on playtests and hypotheses
Every sprint I facilitated pre-playtest hypotheses sessions for the design team to align on what findings we wanted to uncover in our fortnightly playtests. We then collaborated with QA to run these playtests remotely, tailoring scenarios for our players to experience and recording our findings as they played.
​
Afterwards, I'd run a post-playtest review session to discuss findings across the design team and to align on what action items we wanted to move forward with based on the results. This process was pivotal towards the design team staying as in-sync as we were, and lead to us creating a game that achieved the exact vision we were hoping for!