While working at Astound Group as a Creative Technologist, I had the opportunity to develop and help deploy a Match-3 game built in Unity for the CIBC Experience Center in Yorkdale! This project includes 6 themed variations that each represent a different CIBC ambitions. Each featuring a customized experience and providing unique UI, game board, piece icons, and on screen CIBC advice based on your ambition choice! 

As the main developer, I programmed and put together the UI systems, leaderboard system, accessibility system, and scene flow logic by following provided user flows. I used Unity's Animation system to make "false move" animations and I developed an admin system to help with on the go tweaks and updates while playtesting and  performing QA, whether its adjusting the x/y dimensions of the board, piece drop and fill speed, or the game's time limit. This stops you from having to stop running the game, make your changes manually, in code or in the inspector, then re-run the game.

For this project, I engineered a custom leaderboard synchronization system. Both kiosks ran their own local MySQL databases and I integrated local APIs to handle leaderboard entries and store scores offline. These local APIs, provided by our senior developer, communicated with a remote API hosted on a web server which synchronized the data.

Using C# and Unity, I created a system to also pull from the web server periodically so that the screensaver on both kiosks can display accurate updated synchronized high scores. This set up guaranteed offline functionality and stability in the case of potential network disruptions. 

As per client request, to ensure safe public leaderboard input, I integrated a Regex-based profanity filtering system from the Unity asset store. This ensured safe display of the leaderboard name submissions for our cycling screensaver system. At the end of each play session, a QR code will be automatically generated containing the high score and a web link to check your leaderboard placement.

Finally, I implemented a metrics tracking system to record gameplay statistics, engagement data, and high score submission data allowing for the client to review data, performance, and visitor interactions over time!

With designs from our Art Director, imported assets from our Senior Art designer, and rounds of live testing on our large in office touch display, cross collaboration and hard work brought beautiful designs to life!

Astound Group's Case Study