Hassan Rush is an infinite runner game set in Saudi Arabia, where players take on the role of Hassan, chasing his pet goat Dahman across diverse landscapes. Hassan Rush was the first game I worked on after joining Workinman Interactive as a full-time Unity Developer. Our team included a project manager, a senior developer, two artists, and myself. The game was a collaborative effort between Waysun Inc., Workinman Interactive, and Sunwork Studios.

My Role and Contributions

When I joined, the base mechanics were in place, but there was still much to do in terms of adding new mechanics, art assets, and polish. My responsibilities included refining existing mechanics, building new level layouts, implementing new tools and features, and collaborating with artists to enhance the game’s UI, models, and animations. While working on Hassan Rush, I also began developing tools for handling on-screen animations and visual effects. I developed these tools with the goal of making them portable, scalable, and dynamic such that one tool could manage a wide variety of animations. I was later able to port these tools over to later projects I worked on, where I continued developing them with new features and optimizations.

Key Contributions:

• On-Screen Animations and Visual Effects: Created new tools using the DOTween API and various creational design patterns for creating and managing UI animations and visual effects. 
• Art and VFX Enhancements: Implemented new artwork, character animations, and feedback effects to enhance user interaction and game flow.
• Game Economy Improvements: Developed mechanics to encourage resource collection and spending, integrating these with the in-game cash shop.
• Leaderboard and Score Tracking: Assisted in implementing in-game leaderboards and score tracking features to enhance competitive play.

The UI and animation system I developed became a versatile tool that was easy to adapt with integrating new objects and animations, allowing dynamic runtime changes, and allowing for chained animations and flexible settings.

Collaborative Efforts and Additional Contributions:

• Level Design: Designed and implemented engaging levels and obstacle layouts, incorporated new obstacle types, and play tested with team members to ensure engaging challenges and smooth player progression.
• UI/UX Enhancements: Worked closely with the art team to improve several screens through the game, exploring new visual elements and optimizing user flow through iterative processes.
• Sound Design: Played a central role in implementing and refining sound effects, and began developing workflows for marking terrains and object surfaces for different sound feedback types.

Learning and Impact

Hassan Rush provided an invaluable learning experience as my first full-time project at Workinman Interactive. I gained firsthand experience in building new tools and gameplay systems while part of a dedicated development team.