The Devious Lick

https://darkaaron999.itch.io/lick
2 Mar 2026 - 6 Mar 2026

Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning

The Devious Lick was week long challenge for the Sheridan Game Design Program's Design Week.

In a group of 5, we were tasked with creating a game mechanic based on a verb, and creating a playground to showcase the mechanic's capabilities.
For our mechanic, we came up with the verb 'Lick'.
To follow with our verb, we make the player control a giant tongue positioned at the bottom of the screen.

I did a majority of the programming, and I was a strong part of the planning and design process.

Concept

I came up with the licking action, and included multiple ways for the player to interact with the action.
This involved controls, and a common image of a cat licking something, with different ideas attached to it.
With the action, I wrote what the key experience the player would have, and explained why the player would be interested.
Additionally I had the idea to let the player crouch at different heights as I did not know how long the tongue would be yet.

FirstPersonViewIdeation_edited_edited_ed

First Person View Planning

I drew a mockup of what the tongue would look like in the first person view. In it, I showed how the tongue would be connected to the camera, and would always be seen at the bottom of the screen.
Following this, I drew how the camera would move the tongue vertically.

Ideation pt.1

We came up with ideas relating to the tongue to get started.
This included finding what could work with different actions, such as what we could find that relates to Lick and Stick, or what kinds of items the player would be able to interact with and what effects some of the items could have.

Prototype

We got the tongue to work with physics in unity, and to have objects stick to it when right mouse click is held.
This was to test how the tongue would feel in gameplay.

First Person View Planning

After some playtesting, I drew some ideas on how we could change the controls to give the player more meaningful and desired actions.
These new controls would match common desires and problems playtesters vocalized, such as wanting finer control of the tongue, and a way to extend and retract it.

Playtesting

We set up a playground for players to test how the tongue feels to control and how interactions with different objects felt (such as slippery boxes, basketballs, and candy).
This gave us valuable feedback on how we should further improve on the tongue controls and actions.

Finer controls

After some more feedback, we updated the controls to match what players were looking for, including making objects automatically stick to the tongue, and needing to be shook off or thrown (by extending the tongue), making the tongue have more horizontal movement with having it turn with the camera, and binding left and right click to making the tongue tilt up and down.

Visual indicators

We added some visual indicators for tongue interactions.
This includes having spit particles emit from the tongue whenever it comes in contact with something, and having the tongue leave a slobber trail and it is dragged across the ground.

Final Build

The final build includes a playground which showcases multiple uses for the tongue mechanic, all in a playground for the player to explore and engage with.

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