Abigail Scheidler
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Cobble: The Stone Forager
A resource gathering sim about a friendly stone automaton named Cobble helping a group of humans build a settlement. In this student project, rediscover the story of Cobble's creator and rebuild what has been lost. Avaliable on Steam!!!
August 2023 - April 2024
Team 20 Lenses - 8 people
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Steam Stats
ON STEAM NOW!!!!!
Updated 3/14/2025
Role: Narrative Designer/UX Designer
My role on the team was to design the emotional experience of the player. We were working in a custom engine so we were extremely limited on features. I decided to focus my efforts on the initial concept for the story, the design of the character, and the cutscenes.
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Throughout these 8 months, I had to change and adapt my decisions several times.
Synopsis
A long time ago a wizard brought a pile of rocks to life. He named the automaton Cobble. The wizard taught Cobble about humanity and magic. Cobble and the wizard were very close until one day the wizard had to leave for a long trip. Cobble, distraught, slowly powers down.
He waits alone on the island until a nearby shipwreck brings a group of settlers to the island. Reawakened, Cobble wants to help the settlers. They're wary of him but soon accept his help. The player, through Cobble, must gather the necessary resources to build up the new town. After rebuilding the wizard's old tower, the wizard himself returns to the island.
Fun Fact!
Our team name was 20 Lenses because every member of the team had glasses. You might be thinking 8 x 2 = 16 though, and you would be right.
Initial Concept - Why?
Unlike my first project where I dealt with writing dialogue, I was now on a team where dialogue was not an option. I tried to think about how I could get an emotional response from the player.
I decided to use emotes and animation instead.
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My first idea for the game was an island with a god who created a species of stone automatons for an older group of settlers. Cobble was the last of his kind, discovered by a new group of settlers. Ruins scattered around told the story of a past civilization and how Cobble's kind disappeared.
When I clearly understood that this concept was far too big for the scope of the project, I decided to downsize the story from an entire civilization to one wizard. I made Cobble the only one of his kind. Now, Cobble only has an emotional connection with a singular individual from his past, his creator.
Players can find these pages scattered around the area. The placement is designed so they are collected in order. The pages tell the story of Cobble's creation and the wizard's departure.
The last page is stationed outside the final goal, the wizard tower. This ties in the story of the pages to the current game.
A stone asset sit in the middle of a shortcut that the player uses to get back to the town. It shows the order of the pages when collected.
Changes
Reflection:
Having a smaller concept was a great way to focus on one story. The original idea was cool but it just wasn't right for the project. The pages added a new aspect to the game but also did not add a lot of work.
We could have done more with the environment but we were limited to only using Kenny.io assets for the class that this game was made in.
Character Design - Who?
The character of Cobble was designed to be friendly, enduring, and lovable. In the story, Cobble has an elephant-like relationship with humans. He reacts to humans as we react to kittens and puppies.
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However, I still wanted Cobble's appearance to tie into the idea of a giant stone guy. So as the person tasked with creating the asset for Cobble, I started with a very basic shape and simple cute eyes.
After receiving negative feedback on Cobble's appearance, I decided to conduct a playtest. All participants had to match a set of criteria to fall into the game's primary audience. I asked them to rank different versions of Cobble on how "trustworthy" they looked. The results influenced Cobble's redesign.
These were the "most trustworthy" designs that players put. Duplicates are circled in green and blue. It was interesting to hear the different stories that participants came up with to sort the designs.
These were the "least trustworthy" designs. Duplicates are circles in green and blue. A red box means that the design also appeared in the "most trustworthy" from a different participant.
Changes
Cobble's flowery and wide eyes design took from the winning designs that embodied the idea of being "trustworthy"
I also added animation :D
Final Design
Reflection:
It was frustrating when we started getting feedback about Cobble and realized he was being read as an enemy. However, the changes we made based on the playtests ended up being beneficial. The flower on his head was even suggested by one of the participants.
Cutscenes - What?
We wanted to make collecting resources fun and part of that mission was giving the player a reason to fulfill the goals. I needed to find a way to set up a meaningful motivation.
I wanted the player to feel a connection to the villagers through Cobble from the moment they begin the game. By the end I wanted the player to feel rewarded by seeing Cobble get a happy ending.
So I decided to block out and fully animate 3 cutscenes: an intro, an intro after the tutorial, and an outro.
Creating the cutscenes was a difficult and time-consuming process. It required new features from the tech team and a steep learning curve for me as a designer. However, the cutscenes became an important part of the game.
Some first draft storyboards of the intro cutscene.
This is a quick mock-up that I created in Unity to show the size difference between Cobble and the villager. It was also to get a general feel of the cutscenes and emotes.
One of the biggest challenges with this project was the fact that it was made in a custom engine. Therefore, I had to learn to work in JSON files to do all of the animations for the cutscenes.
The tech team created a "Command Animator" that mimicked some of the features that commercial engines have. It was much more tedious and time consuming but it let me get comfortable with JSONs.
To make working in JSON easier, I created a spreadsheet to act as a timeline. This let me see how the different animation scripts were acting in tandem.
The Process
Final Animations
Finally, I was able to put together the final animations after a long struggle. I added sound effects to the animations and spent time fine-tuning the numbers to create a charming story.
​...Player completes Entire game...
Roll Credits!
Player begins
the game...
​...Player completes the tutorial...
Reflection:
This was a LOT of work. I started working on the cutscenes late into the project because I needed to be taught how to use the custom engine. I had to crunch to get it in. I regret that but I am extremely proud of these cutscenes now. It was a technical challenge as well as a narrative challenge for me but I was able to overcome them!
