Gimme S’more

Gimme S’more is a two-player arcade style game with custom hardware controllers.

Context: Created for the course Alternative Arcade Control Interfaces at CU

Duration: Fall 2025

Tools: Arduino, Unity, Rhino, and Procreate

My Role: Game Development, Asset Creation, and Fabrication

Team Members:

Nathanael Lee: Electronics + Paddle Logic

Emily Harris: Fabrication

Game Overview:

Players must race to collect s’more ingredients on the Great Chocolate Lake, controlling their boat with marshmallow sticks and paddling just like they would a regular paddle. When they collect all the ingredients needed (a graham cracker, a piece of chocolate, and a marshmallow), they can craft a s’more.

The player with the most s’mores when time runs out, wins the game!

Click Here To Play!

The Process

BACKGROUND

How might we create a competitive play experience with alternative controllers?

early version of the game used for testing the paddle

We were tasked to create a custom game and controller input system in time to test at the Whaaat!? Festival. These were the design constraints:

Arcade Style: Short-Term & a Spectacle!

Unconventional Input Control (no joysticks)

IDEATION

Summer Camp Themed

To begin, my team and I met up and pitched ideas to each other. This is when we started drawing out initial sketches and planning out what we wanted the interaction and game loop be.

boat game sketch

Arcade games can have less than a minute of play time. Therefore, they have to be intuitive and simple. Item collection is a popular mechanic that we based our game loop on.

Additionally, by having the players control a boat with a “paddle”, they be able to draw on existing knowledge and context to understand how the controller was meant to be used.

original game loops

PLAYTESTING AND ITERATION

The process of developing the game involved a lot of trial and error. I was still new to Unity so it was a huge learning curve and challenge to match my game dev skills to what I knew about UX. However, just like all good design, testing with people outside of our group was incredibly helpful in informing the direction I needed to take with the game.

The Design Loop:

Test it:

We were very fortunate to not only have input from established game designers, but we were able to test the first functional prototype of our game at the Whaaat!? Festival.

Iterate based on findings:

(not a gif)

For example, it was difficult for players to keep track of which items they had or needed since they had to focus on obstacles as well as collection. By changing to a system that resembled Snake, players could easily know what they had and when s’mores were crafted since they would animate out of their inventory.

THEMES AND TAKEAWAYS

Repeat.

Each round of testing focused on specific questions like:

  • Do players understand what they’re supposed to do?

  • Is it challenging enough? too challenging?

  • Is this mechanic interesting or fun?

  • Are there bugs or functionality issues?

  • How do we improve the UI and add visual clarity

Create something to test: