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- SonicGamer1180 -

Team Size : solo

Role : Game Designer, Programmer

Engine : Unity

Time : Oct. 2020 (3 weeks)

Characters Gameplay Design

The Knight

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  • A very versatile character with both offensive, defensive, and repositioning mechanics

  • Aimed at players with beginner gameplay skills

  • His kit still allows for some higher-level gameplay, thanks to animation cancelling

The Hunter

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The Jump-Girl

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  • A ranged and low mobility character with offensive and dodging mechanics

  • Aimed at players with intermediate gameplay skills and good reaction time, requiring proper positionning to attack and dodge simultaneously

  • His kit is more rigidly designed, both for thematic and gameplay reasons

  • An high-mobility character with both  offensive and repositioning mechanics, who can attack from distance and up close

  • Aimed at players with advanced gameplay skills and very good reaction time, requiring proper positionning to attack and dodge simultaneously

  • Her fluid kit was intentionally designed to take advantage of i-frames and animation cancelling in order to chain attacks and jumps as quickly as possible

Enemies & Boss Design

Tier 1

The Zombie

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Little but nasty, he walks by quickly bouncing forward, which can make it a hard target for the Jump Girl

The Archer

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Shooting at distance with good reaction time, he can also retreat when he feels too much danger

The Slime

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Slow and dumb. But only the Knight will  easily slash his way through a big group of them

The Ghost

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Attacking from above, the Ghost may reveal itself to be a tricky enemy in crowded scenarios

Tier 2

The Wizard

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The enemy with less mobility, he makes up for it with a highly damaging fireball

The Skeleton

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Able to protect itself with a shield, the Skeleton can kill you in no time with his sword. Unless you attack it from behind.

Tier 3

The Monk

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The Monk has very low mobility, but good health and varied attack patterns that can even pick up an uncarefully airborne Jump Girl

Tier 4

The Grand Master

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The Grand Master has it all. Strong health, high damage, and a wind-like movement that can quickly kill off-guard players

Level Design

The Castle

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The Knight tries to escape the castle in which he has been imprisoned for months. But many enemies await along his path.

  • Size : 200 units  

  • Density : Low (~2 enemies per 10 units)

  • Breathing Areas : 3

  • Enemy max tier : 1

  • Boss : No

The Swamp

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The Hunter has been tracking down a dangerous Monk who settled in the swamp. The target is closer, he can feel it.. But a new type of enemy has appeared, and he is strong.

  • Size : 220 units  

  • Density : Medium (~3 enemies per 10 units)

  • Breathing Areas : 3

  • Enemy max tier : 3

  • Boss : Yes

The Cyber City

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The Jump-Girl decided to halt her carefree life and challenge the ruler of her district, the feared and revered Grand Master. But the best killers of the town have gathered to stop her.

  • Size : 200 units  

  • Density : High (~4 enemies per 10 units)

  • Breathing Areas : 2

  • Enemy max tier : 4

  • Boss : Yes

Main Problems

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Every level must be enjoyable with every character

There should be player-paced difficulty

  • The first problem is quite obvious, but trickier to solve than I first expected. Because though I wanted every level to be enjoyed no matter your character, I still wanted the player to feel a sense of progression. Finishing the last level with a mastered Jump-Girl should feel more rewarding and effective than finishing it with the Knight or even the Hunter.

  • The second problem emerged from my decision to have the main difficulty coming from the characters' gameplay mechanics mastery, and not solely from the enemy or level design, for a personal gameplay design challenge purpose. So, I created the problem myself: having an enemy-based difficulty (for example via the tried and true stats increase) would have been the easiest solution.

And their solutions

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Ensure enemy encounters are doable for all characters

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Identify each character's pros/cons and build levels around those

  • This essentially revolved around a lot of playtesting (both from me and the client) and identify the parts that were too hard with a character in order to avoid them.

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  • By identifying those pros/cons, I was able to come up with a basic design language when chosing a specific enemy or an encounter and tune each level's difficulty for each character.

Social improvements

  • Understanding a client's needs

  • Turning his ideas into a prototype

  • Identifying the core concepts that needed to be tested first

  • Finding the right scope to give the final product on schedule

Technical improvements

  • Building my own Enum-based State Machine

  • Using weighted decision-making functions instead of boolean logic for better AI

  • Combining Inheritance with Composition to have both modular and reusable code

Creative improvements

  • Manipulating AI's knowledge to make them feel more intelligent than they actually are

  • Designign character that offer different gameplay styles

  • Carefully placing the enemies to get the proper level pacing and difficulty

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