Quest for Dendoro

How do you design a game with and for pre-teens? Quest for Dendoro is a 2.5D action-adventure RPG created for a children ages 9-11. While this range may seem narrow, pre-teens experience significant growth at varying rates, so a 9-year-old may struggle wth concepts easy for an 11-year-old to grasp.

Project Details

Genre: 2.5D action-adventure RPG
Platforms: WebGL, PC (intended for touchscreen)
Engine and tools: Unity, C#, GitHub
Team size: 5
Duration: October 2025 - December 2025 (3 months)
Status: Released December 2025

As Producer, Programmer, & Designer, I...

Established experience goals and development timeline for MVP of 2.5D RPG developed with 5-person team
Implemented and iterated on core gameplay systems such as movement, interaction, combat, boss behavior, billboarding 2D assets, and character customization for 2.5D RPG developed with 5-person team
Conducted playtests with target audience (children ages 9-11) to identify issues, evaluate needs, and improve design, e.g. prioritizing touchscreen interface since users preferred iPads over keyboards
Facilitated weekly standups for sharing updates, identifying blockers, and re-evaluating priorities, tracking progress using team log document and Trello board
Wrote and implemented all overworld and cutscene dialogue to better integrate gameplay with existing story

Playtests and Iterations

Before we even started making the game, we met with the 4th and 5th graders at MCCS to play games with them and better understand their wants and needs. Through observing them play and talk about their favorite board games and video games, we found that they tended...

to prefer consistent participation rather than waiting to take turns
to prefer sidescrolling over third-person cameras for easier spatial judgment
to be unfamiliar with keyboard controls, using either one finger or two overlapping hands for directional keys
to love fantasy settings, with fantasy roleplay being a popular pasttime
to dislike conventional narratives such as rescuing a damsel in distress

Based on their preferences, we decided to create an action-adventure RPG in a fantasy setting with a narrative twist with touchscreen controls, iterating following playtests every two weeks.

Selected learnings:

Problem discovered: Some players struggled to understand where the colliders for 2D sprites in 3D space would be.
Solution: Increase hitbox size, decrease hurtbox size, and remove body collision damage, focusing on damage through telegraphed attacks.
Problem discovered: Players were confused about how long it took to defeat bosses, and bosses would sometimes die off screen.
Solution: Add boss healthbar to HUD so it is visible at all times, and add cutscene after boss is defeated.