Gameplay Design

During my tenure at Grease Monkey Games, I contributed to the development of 3 officially released game modes.

While additional game modes were also planned, they were ultimately cut due to resource and time constraints. As a part of a team of 3 designers, my primary focus was on creating new modes for the game. These were all documented within their own design documents that were iterated on and then used to create the modes as they are in the game right now.

The three game modes officially released, that I designed were:

  • Freestyle (Released in 0.9 Update)

  • Lead & Chase (Released in 0.10 Update)

  • Drift Skills (Released in 0.11 Update)

  • 5+ more Unreleased modes Including an unreleased Tutorial. (Contact me for more info!)

Freestyle

Freestyle is a game mode that tasks the player to get the highest possible score in the time limit. (Yes very basic!)

Players earn points by drifting, but can further increase their point Multiplier by through Clipping Points & Clipping Zones, as well as performing different drift modes.

Freestyle Designs

Irwindale Beginner: Out Now

This was the first Freestyle layout I created. All the beginner “Freestyle” events only contain clipping points, as clipping zones are saved for Intermediate & Pro.

I chose the center of the track to do this on as it is the most “open” part of the map, with barely any obstacles for players to collide with and gave players the freedom to “stuff up” and go again until they finally got it.

Daikoku Beginner: Out Now

After we released Daikoku to the public, we knew that we wanted to have Freestyle on the biggest map on the game, the hard part was finding where to put it.

I chose the spot under the freeway and cleared out all the obstacles to allow for an easier experience for new players. I created the Beginner freestyle using only Clipping Points. this area did have some organic obstacles for players to dodge, such as the Freeway beams. This helped to add a little bit of challenge for newer players without being super punishing.

Other Freestyle events I created:

Long Beach:

  • Intermediate

  • Pro

Irwindale:

  • Intermediate

  • Pro

Daikoku

  • Intermediate

  • Pro

Ebisu:

  • Beginner (Coming Soon)

Lead & Chase

Lead & Chase is a game mode where players can either do a “Lead” run or “Chase” another Lead car.

The “Lead” player must follow a strict path and maximise their score using Clipping Points & Zones, to get the highest score possible.

The “Chase” player is tasked with following the “Lead” car from behind, without crashing into them.

Lead & Chase Designs

RTR Drift: Out Now

I created this run after watching Adam LZ’s videos during R&D

This entire run is based on a video that Adam LZ posted on his YouTube channel. I painstakingly recreated this layout first with a paper design then in engine.
After making this layout in secret, I showed the Marketing team my mock-up comparison video. This then became a major marketing piece that Grease Monkey Games used to promote the latest update at the time.

This was the most fun I had creating a layout in the game.

The Squiggle: Coming Soon

This run was one that I created post update 0.10. It takes place outside of the normal playable space of Irwindale.

Previously this area was inaccessible to players via normal means. However as a designer I wanted to utilise as much playable space as possible and this desolate area was just taking up space and not being well utilised.

So I got to work, re-working the area in a separate data layer and then creating a mock-up. After lots of iteration the layout worked seamlessly.

The Squiggle is designed for higher skilled players. There are 13 turns and will take even the highest skilled players multiple attempts to successfully master.

Working out of the normal playable area lead to more areas of maps that were previously going unused to be repurposed into playable areas, This is evident within the new “Race mode” with the Drag strip in Irwindale being utilised in the game for that mode specifically.

Round The Puddle: Out Now

This was another run on the LZ Compound that I had a lot of fun creatin. It is again designed for higher skilled players as it is quite difficult with very tight turns. However once mastered it helps players feel accomplished and was quite a popular run when Lead & Chase launched in update 0.10

Other Lead & Chase runs I created:

Long-Beach:

  • Full Track

  • Formula Drift

  • Back Street's Back

  • Tokyo Drift

  • Mother Trucker (Coming Soon)

Irwindale:

  • The Beginning

  • Speedway

  • Infinity

  • Formula Drift

LZ Compound:

  • Back Roads

  • Crashed my Supra (Coming Soon)

Drift Skills

Drift Skills teaches the players the fundamental mechanics of the game Step by step.
Play through a total of 30 Unique & timed challenges created to test even the most skilled drifters.

Each Section introduces a new mechanic for players to master, If players do not reach the target score they cannot progress to the next stage.

Players will learn the fundamentals (Driving, Steering Braking) but also will also learn more advanced moves as they progress.

Drift Skills were designed to get marginally more difficult as they progress, with some “cool off” levels thrown into the mix too so that players don’t get too overwhelmed.

My Drift Skills Designs

  • 1-1

    The First Level. Needed to be super simple with the only objective being, get to the end.

  • 1-2

    Needed to be slightly harder than the first, but still be quite easy. Hence there are only 3 fairly easy to control turns.

  • 1-3

    The final one from the first sequence. Slightly increasing the difficulty with tighter turns and more of them.

  • 3-1

    The First Set that include handbrake turns, an essential skill to master in Drifting.

  • 3-2

    Needed to be slightly harder than previous and included 5 different handbrake turns.

  • 3-3

    Final one for the introduction to Handbrake turns. Players have to complete 7, with less space between each turn.

  • 5-1

    Section 5 introduces players to Donuts. The first stage with donuts, players have to complete two, with a couple of handbrakes in between.

  • 5-2

    Like with previous entries, 5-2 needed to be slightly more difficult than previously. So i added an extra donut to this one, and made the layout a bit tighter.

  • 5-3

    The hardest level, so far... Included 3 donuts again, but made it super tight between to test players skill.

  • 7-1

    Section 7 introduces players to Clipping Points, an important mechanic within Freestyle and Lead & Chase that help to maximise points.

  • 7-2

    Added more Clipping Points, but also included more handbrakes and more areas to teach players how to drift in tight spaces.

  • 7-3

    This one personally is the most fun, and with a good enough car you can drift the entire time around each of the spirals. Can be quite difficult for new players, which is why it is the final for stage 7.

  • 9-1

    Section 9 introduces players to "Clipping Zones" another advanced mechanic that players need to master in order to maximise their scores in other game modes.

  • 9-2

    For this one, to ramp up the difficulty, I included sharp turns at the end, where players had to use their handbrakes, as well as 3 different clipping zones for players to collect.

  • 9-3

    The final one before the last stage, to increase the difficulty there is a mix of Clipping Points, Clipping zones and tight paths.