The Queensland Police Service has released a video game, aimed at educating children on safety when out and about trick-or-treating.
Below, our developers talk us through the creation of the QPS' first video game.
Trick or Treat – Lolly Quest 2022 was a very interesting project to be dropped on our desks: an interactive edutainment initiative with the goal of teaching kids how to stay safe while out and about this Halloween.
A project of this type was uncharted territory for the QPS, but one we were happy to take on in order to provide a unique, fun and interesting service to the community.
This post will cover how we went about the development of Lolly Quest, show off some concept art and early gameplay videos, as well as describe some of the goals, milestones, and hurdles we faced along the way.
Stable foundations
Back in 2020, Queensland Police released a video titled Trick or Treat: Lolly Quest 2020 in the style of a retro-inspired adventure featuring a young child protagonist trick-or-treating with their mother as she teaches them how to stay safe around various hazards.
This video acted as a base for Lolly Quest – providing a setting and story, as well as art and sound direction, and it's 90's adventure game aesthetic made it the perfect candidate for adaptation into a fully fledged video game.
We are always on the lookout for new ways to reach out and spread safety and crime prevention messaging to the community, so we began the work to turn this idea into reality. The target audience for the game is primarily kids aged 8 to 14.
Humble beginnings
Production of Lolly Quest began in early August with a deadline of just under 3 months.
The free and open source Godot was chosen as the game engine for development due to its light weight, ease of use, portability and various other technical factors.
A test map was quickly mocked up with temporary artwork, a protagonist character, a non-player character (NPC), dialogue and follow systems.
Next came the area just outside the protagonist's home.
Here a cutscene system was introduced so mum could observe events occurring in the world, respond to them and direct the player. This system is also the one used to provide most of our safety messaging within the game.
By this point, the basics were in place and we could get to work adding more maps, NPCs, dialogue and content.
Creating the World
Based on the 2020 video, we knew we needed the following maps:
- Inside your home
- Street just outside your house
- Town
- Busy road
- Park
- Suburb
We also knew we wanted the police station to be explorable so a map was created for that, and finally one was made for the house of a friend of the protagonist.
To create the maps we once again looked to the open source community and found the Tiled level editor.
Making the maps outside of Godot allowed us to continue developing the game while they were being worked on.
Maps were constructed with 16×16 pixel tiles layered on top of each other.
Collision shapes were then added to stop the player being able to walk through physical objects such as walls or furniture.
Once complete, a map was imported into Godot and NPCs, hitboxes and other elements were added.
Providing goals
Having a world to run around in is great, but players need a compelling reason to stick around. The player needed a goal – something to strive towards.
From the 2020 video we see the protagonist being rewarded with lollies for visiting houses with QPS 'Welcome' posters and receiving a red 'fail' screen when making mistakes. This provided a starting point but for an interactive medium like a video game more was needed.
We decided in addition to receiving lollies for visiting houses with QPS Welcome posters, the player would have the goal of finding four stickers hidden around the game world.
Each sticker represents a real world QPS mascot. They are:
- Seymour the Owl
- Clancy the Koala
- Cluedo the Police Dog
- Connie the Police Horse
The stickers are acquired by performing various tasks – for example one is rewarded for completing a safety quiz, while another is given for helping reunite a lost child with their mother.
Below is a short video of the early and final versions of the sticker acquisition screen:
To de-incentivise misbehaviour, a small lolly penalty is applied when making mistakes such as getting too close to strangers or running onto the road.
Dialogue and interaction
Dialogue is a major aspect of the players interaction with Lolly Quest world.
Whether it be NPCs chatting with one another, the player talking to them directly, or mum providing her guidance, the player is almost always being presented with dialogue in some form.
With a target audience of young children, a conscious effort was placed on keeping the tone of the dialogue humorous and comforting.
From Curator Lisa's puns to mum's dissatisfaction with the protagonist's attempts to look in the various bins around the world, humour can be found in just about every piece of text in the game.
Playtesting and feedback
With Lolly Quest nearing its final stages of development, it was time for playtesting.
Having a diverse range of play-testers is very helpful when developing a game as it highlights areas players may struggle with on release, as well as providing a platform for suggestions, ideas and constructive criticism.
One example of a change that came about from playtesting was in the very first room of the game.
Some players unfamiliar with this type of game struggled to find the exit to the room. The room consists of various pieces of furniture and clutter, a window and a set of stairs.
We noticed the players would run at the cupboard thinking it was a doorway.
A brainstorming session took place on how best to deal with this situation.
Suggestions included having tutorial text state the player should head down stairs to start their adventure, or after a while an arrow should appear pointing towards the stairs.
Eventually it was decided to display a speech bubble coming from the stairs with mum calling to the player after a few seconds. This both brought the player's attention to the stairs while simultaneously not breaking their immersion.
One other issue we noticed was the difficulty some players were experiencing in finding stickers or knowing where to go next.
To solve this we took inspiration from the character Ulrira from Zelda: Links Awakening and added phone booths with a tip line.
For three lollies, the player can request a tip on where they should head next.
This resulted in the phone booths not only provided much-needed direction, but also doubling as a purpose for the lollies the player has been collecting all game!
Conclusion
QPS Trick or Treat – Lolly Quest 2022 was a fun project to work on and presented us with a previously unexplored avenue for getting our safety messaging to an engaged but difficult-to-reach audience.
QPS' goal is to offer as much aid and support as possible to the community and we hope Lolly Quest is successful in this endeavour.
We hope you have a wonderful and safe Halloween 2022!
