DiverCity

Introduction

During my time working with Hello Escape, I had the opportunity to develop DiverCity, a Unity-based game that challenges players to embrace diversity through immersive storytelling and puzzle-solving.

The game centers around a city impacted by a villain who releases a gas that amplifies biases and division among its inhabitants. As the hero, players control three unique characters—Eagle, Echo, and Shield—each with their own set of abilities that reflect their individual strengths and the broader theme of unity in diversity.

• Eagle with sharp vision and a deep understanding of electronics, represents clarity and precision.
• Echo equipped with incredible hearing and the ability to tell truth from lies, embodies the power of communication and empathy.
• Shield possessing immense physical strength, symbolizes protection and resilience.

The core objective of DiverCity is to go through the city, uncover clues, solve puzzles, and gather evidence to track down the discriminative villain. Along the way, players encounter puzzles that require collaboration between the heroes, utilizing each one’s unique abilities to unlock the path forward.

Talking Development

During my time with Hello Escape, one of my key responsibilities was developing and refining a robust gameplay framework that served as the backbone for all of the company's games. As the lead programmer, I worked extensively on this framework, which became the foundation for every new project, constantly expanding with new features and mechanics.

This streamlined approach allowed games to be developed quickly and almost entirely within the editor, with only very specific mechanics requiring additional scripting.

With this framework in place, we were able to efficiently develop levels and puzzles, translating the game design documents and visual assets provided by designers and artists directly into gameplay logic. This pipeline allowed us to quickly implement and test new features, ensuring that each element of the game aligned with the creative vision while maintaining high production speed.

Localization of the game

This game was designed with multiple regions in mind, so from the start, we focused on English, Spanish, and French as primary languages. With the modular localization system we developed, we created support for easily adding language-specific elements such as audio, images, and text.

The system is set up to handle seamless swapping of localized audio, text, and images directly from the Unity editor, streamlining the integration of new languages. Additionally, it includes event-based calls accessible from within the scripts, allowing more control and customization for certain mini-games.