Mow Down
Mow Down is a local party game, developed Unreal Engine. In this game, you and a friend fight over a conflict about your shared victorian garden. You ride your landmower and use whatever ends up in your grass bag.
Garden Rivalry
The game is designed to spark friendly competition between players by combining fast-paced gameplay with tactical depth. Riding lawnmowers, players strategically maneuver through the playfield, aiming to outwit their opponent while standing their ground. This rivalry is fueled by the creative use of tools and items gathered from their grass bags, ensuring every match feels personal and dynamic.
Tactical Chaos
Mow Down emphasizes a balance of chaos and strategy, ensuring gameplay feels unpredictable yet rewarding for skilled players. The quirky, fast-paced action of riding and clashing lawnmowers is complemented by the thoughtful management of collected items, which can be used to your advantage. This tension between improvisation and planning keeps the gameplay exciting, fair, and fun for everyone.
On this project I got the responsibilities of a Gameplay System Designer, being responsible for general gameplay systems and player movement systems. This included:
Movement Systems, which included:
Navigation System
Acceleration / Dash System
Balancing the 3C’s
Designing a System to Prevent Spawn Camping
Respawn System
Invulnerability System
QA testing to create fair and tense gameplay, making adjustments based on feedback.
Worked closely with other designers to align ammo systems with desired gameplay experience.
I was responsible during this project for creating player systems that would support a fair playstyle and encourage fighting your opponent.
To facilitate this I had to work together closely with our level designers, weapon designer, gameplay programmers and perform lots of playtests.
Based on the results that we gathered from playtesting I balanced the existing systems and had to design some new systems.
Below here you can read about some of the systems I designed and their intention.
University Project
About
~8 weeks
Mow Down official Trailer
My Role
Showcase
14 people
Local Party Game
Gameplay System designer
What
Designed a system that gives you more movement as a player. By pressing and holding down a button the speed of the player would increase hugely.
How
By mowing over grass that is not cut yet, you gain charge for the acceleration mechanic. This mechanic was simple to use and supported by UI elements to ensure players could focus their attention on the gameplay without micro-tracking their resources.
Why
From playtests it became clear that players often felt like they could not do anything after being hit and felt stuck. The other player would just hid somewhere far away from the player they just hit. To create more balanced gameplay we provided a system that closes distance more easily and opens up opportunities to players both offensively and defensively.
Acceleration System
What
Designed a system that makes the players rotation their character in a smooth way which resembles the movement of a real lawnmower.
How
By having a smooth interpolation in orientation between the current and desired angle we tried to make it feel realistic to players. It does require a small amount of time to get to the desired rotation.
Why
Using a small delay in the rotation process allowed players to punish eachother for small mistakes. Not only did this make the game more realistic but it also created a more tense PvP environment in which players could improve their skills to better the other.
Navigation System
What
When the players are hit they have to respawn somewhere else to make sure the gameplay stays interesting and challenging. For this I designed a system to ensure nice balancing and fair opportunities.
How
The moment a player gets hit they will be launched up in the air. Seconds later they will fall down on another location in the level. The moment the player lands they can start shooting again, but the animation that is playing allows the other player to anticipate before they get shot unfairly. At first the player will be invulnerable and after a few seconds they will be back to their normal play state.
The locations are pre-determined and the levels offer about 5 locations to both players. The logic it uses is simple; it checks for the location of the enemy, then checks which respawn location is the furthest away from the opponent and spawns the player that was just hit there. For this we needed to manually place the spawn locations in covered locations to also give the former-attacker a fair chance at playing the game.
Why
Before using any system for respawning the players would always drive into eachother and have an awkward facedown. The person with the most bullets or best timing would kill the other one. To make sure the game would keep progressing without any awkward situations we made a respawn system. This gives both players a fair opportunity to fight again after being hit.
On top of this we apply an invulnerable state to the respawning player. ensuring they can engage in battle again without being shot immediately after respawning. We enforce the respawning player to use this state to attack and the other player to make sure they will not try to abuse the respawn.
Respawn System