Whacked! is a party game developed by Presto Studios and released by Microsoft Game Studios exclusively for the Xbox. It was one of the two original games to be made available for Xbox Live
Environmental Level Design
As a concept artist for Whacked! My task was to design a few different environmental concepts or “Arenas” for players to play in. One of the concepts that I developed was called “Pirate Ship.” In which the players run around on a pirate ship as the arena. The twist on the theme was that the pirate ship was actually a toy pirate ship and the ocean in which it was in, was in fact an actual bath tube. The story behind the theme was a person watching tv and playing with bath tub toys such as a pirate ship and a rubber ducky, before getting electrocuted when the tv fell into the water. So as the players run around the toy pirate ship, they will occasionally see a huge toy rubber duck and also a twitching human foot in the water. In the concept image below you’ll see the whole scene, with a TV, remote control, a toy Rubber ducky and the Pirate ship.
The rain coming down as you are playing the game was actually water from the shower head. The players will also notice lightning and thunder that turned out to be the flickering TV in the water of the bath tub.
The next level was called ” THE BANO!“ translated the “restroom“. Pretty much the nastiest, filthiest, dirtiest restroom you’ll find at a local rest stop, gas station etc. In this level the playing arena is actually the ceiling fan. You as a player will be running around jumping from blade to blade of the ceiling fan.. and if you look up you’ll see the toilet, sink and the filthy walls of the restroom.
This next level “DEEP FRY!” didn’t quite make the cut, not because it wasn’t extremely fun and funny, but because we just couldn’t get the mechanics to fully work as we intended. Just didn’t have the extra time to put into the mechanics to do what we really wanted to do. Every player kept dying when the basket of fries gets dumped in the oil. lol However visually it was still a pretty awesome looking level and fun to play.
The game required a tremendous amount of thought and creativity when everyone was challenged to come up with what was called “Stupid Stupid Weapons” so here are just a few that were conjured up…cupcakes, twinkies, time bombs, fingers, and clowns.
