Fire Starter

An alt-controller game created as a student project during a game jam in Fall 2025. The player interacts with a wooden firepit as a physical controller to start a fire in-game. The physical components use a rotary gear and an airflow sensor to simulate applying friction and blowing on the fire, respectively. As the project manager, I facilitated proper online and offline communication among the design team, assigning responsibilities and keeping the vision of the project consistent.

The gameplay loop was designed by my team in such a way that we wanted to create a haptic experience that physically immerses players in the fire-starting process. The alt-controller was designed accordingly, made with real wood pieces while still feeling smooth on a player's hands to prevent cuts and splinters.

One feature I prototyped was a timed progress bar shown on screen during the blowing phase, with a green highlight showing the threshold at which the player needs to time blowing into the firepit to progress the game. Due to the constraints of the airflow sensor, we decided to make it based on timing rather than the magnitude of the airflow, as the latter could have presented accessibility issues. Once the feature was working, we adjusted variables such as progress speed and progress recession based on play tester feedback.

The digital component can be found here: https://cherrycolaman.itch.io/fire-starter-design-week-fall-2025