Jacobo Luengo's Game Design Portfolio: Motorama: Classic Racing

Freedom Factory Studios

PC

Description:

Motorama is a street racing arcade game set in the fictional town of Sierra Lake in the U.S. that puts players in the shoes of Ray Maggio, a young man who yearns to reach the top in the risky world of street racing.

For many years, street races have been popular around Sierra Lake, one of California’s most famous cities. Flashy cars driven by skilled racers, lots of money in stake and the most beautiful girls create an explosive cocktail that only the bravest are able to swallow.

In Motorama players will be at the wheel of a vehicle from their collection and compete against rivals divided in different categories in makeshift circuits spread throughout the whole city. Depending on their skills during the race and final result, players will receive a financial reward which allows them to invest the money they won in both mechanical and visual customization parts for their vehicles or buy new cars with unique features, so they can face tougher opponents.

The game is based on repeating these mechanics with the advantage of being able to choose the way it will be, because the choice of car, race, rivals or customization is completely free.

My role:

Lead Game Designer

Vehicle Handling Design

Level Design

As lead designer, I was in charge of creating almost the whole content of the game. Starting from the main concept, I established gameplay rules, created environments and circuits, cars and categories, game modes, options, rewards, progression and economy system having in mind game's target market and company resources.

I created and designed the Driver Experience, which is the base of progression system in Motorama. It is an experience system where players earn points after each race depending on their skills during the race and their final result. These DXP points allow players to level up and unlock new content and direct rewards, and also grants money to improve their cars or buy new ones.

I also designed an achievement system that rewards players with style points when they make special maneuvers during races such as drifting, driving through the opposite lane, performing a clean overtake or reaching their speed threshold. These style points contribute in earning DXP.

Tuning is an important part in Motorama. For this reason, I created a complete workshop where players can customize their cars. Some improvements are only visual (body kits, rims, paint types...) while others modifies car stats and performance (carburetor, torsion bars, brakes...).

I created several event types (race, knockout, sprint, time attack...) and distributed them through the game, changing the rules and difficulty depending on story progression and adjusting rewards based on this difficulty level.

During part of the development, I managed two more designers who contributed with me in the creation of content. One of them was in charge of writing the story, creating characters and their biographies, and giving them coherence between the world we created and their own relationships. The other one designed a mission flow for the entire game based on previously established game modes, characters and story. All this content was not included in the final version.

As I worked as vehicle handing design in previou projects, I was in charge of creating and configuring all cars based on real models between the 30's and 50's. I established the rules to convert their real physics parameters to a user-friendly stats system that players could manage. I divided all cars in several categories and classes depending on their driving style and performance, contributing to making a richer progression system.

Finally, I was in charge of creating all the environments and circuits. This includes not only the design, but also rivals and traffic paths, triggers and some cameras and implemented them in the game using in-house tile and streaming tools. For this part, I worked with two producers that previously have worked as designers. They contributed in the implementation of designed content.