During my time at E2i Creative Studios, we created a small educational game about microchip creation. The game became a Serious Games Showcase finalist at ITSEC 2024. You can find the showcase listing page Here
Microchip Mayhem Trailer
My responsibilities
I was part of the design process for this game, contributing to the core idea, values for the machines and recipes, and other decisions relatd to game flow.
On the programming side, I worked on a lot of gameplay elements. I didn’t do the movement, but I did picking up and placing wafers, the machine states and tasks, the interface, and a lot of other aspects of the game logic and flow.
Project Duration
We worked on and completed this game in approximately 6 weeks
Design Goals
- Introduce the basic concept of the layered microchip fabrication process
- Create an engaging and fun game that can be easily picked up and learned
- Target younger kids and a wide general audience
Design Overview
In Microchip Mayhem, up to four players take control of robot workers in a microchip fabrication facility. The robots’ goal is to construct other robots, by completing as many microchip wafers as possible within the three minute time limit.
Microchip wafers are created by first picking up an empty wafer from the wafer dispensors at the top of the fabrication floor, and bringing them to the correct machine with a color that matches each step of that wafer’s 3-step recipe. Once the wafer is inserted into the machine, the coating process starts and a timer counts down until it’s finished. A coated wafer can then be removecd and taken to the next step. If the wafer was put into the wrong colored machine, it gets ruined and must be discareded in one of the recycling bins at either side of the floor. When all three of a wafer’s recipe steps are completed, it must be taken to one of the robot construction bays at the bottom of the floor to add that completed robot part to one of the four robots under construction. There are four types of wafers, head, torso, base, and arms, and each robot under construction needs all four to be completed and counted towards the team’s score.
Teams are given a point for every completed robot, with the time of their last completed robot being used to sort teams with the same score on the leaderboard.
Systems and Elements
Player Robots
Each of the four players controls a robot. We intentionally kept the controls very simple. The players’ only actions during gameplay are to move and pick up or put down wafers.
Wafers
To create one of the four needed microchip wafers, an empty wafer needs three colored layers added to it in the correct order. The four types of wafer, head, body, base, and arms, all have a specific recipe
When a player picks up a wafor, the recipe for that specific wafer, as well as which, if any, steps are completed is shown on that player’s HUD.
Machines
A machine with the same color will apply that colored layer to a wafer taking 8 seconds for the process to finish. A wafer can then be removed and taken to another machine for its next step. The lights on the side of each machine indicates its condition. After 5 uses, the machine breaks and becomes unavailalbe as its repaired for 10 seconds.
Recycling Bins
Any wafers that were put in the wrong colored machine must be disposed of in the recycling bins. These bins also serve as a way to discard any held wafers when there is nowhere to put them.
Robot Construction Bays
At the bottom of the floor are four bays where robots are being constructed. This is where players can deposite completed wafers. A robot can only accept a wafer for a part that it’s missing. Once all 4 parts are added to a robot, the robot is complete, and an empty one takes its place.
Time limit and Scoring
Each game lasts 3 minutes. A team gets a point for every robot they managed to complete. Scores are recorded on a leaderboard, and teams are ranked based on how many robots they completed and how much time was remaining when they completed their last robot.
Microchip Production Concepts
Chip Recipes and the Layering Process
The core concept being introduced in Microchip Mayhem is microchip wafer production. The production process involves applying a series of material coatings in a specific order. The exact order and materials used are highly speicifc and proprietary to the product being created. Each product has what’s called a recipe, which can be hundreds of steps long. Here we’ve taken that idea, simplified the different steps to colors, and greatly shortened the recipe.
Capacity Planning
We wanted players to understand the choices made at microchip fabs in order to create the most chips possible as quickly as possible. We wanted players to figure out strategies of ensuring that enough wafers were in production at any given time, but that not all the machines of one type were occupied at once. We chose to have one fewer red machine than any other to create a bottleneck for players to have to work around.
Machine Maintenance
We wanted to include the idea of machines going offline and needing maintenance which stops the use of that machine in production. Every machine will eventually need scheduled or unscheduled maintenance, so we have machines break after a number of uses to represent this concept.