Tech designer
System designer
Narrative designer
IN CHARGE OF:
Designing and implementing turn-by-turn combat
Implementing the temperature system within combat gameplay
Designing and implementing the character switch system
Designing and implementing the dialogue system
Creating a high-fantasy world based on european alchemy
Altered State
JRPG / Unity / 4 weeks
A classic JRPG with a focus on strategic combat and exploration.
Leaghan taking damage.
Isen changing state from solid to liquid after a fireball.
Overworld exploration
One of the particularities of our project was that the player could assume the role of Isen, Leaghan and Uriel, switching from one to the other.
The three characters have their own use within the overworld, interacting with the various level elements in different ways, allowing us to create overworld puzzles.
In terms of tech, I opted to have the characters actually in a prison off-camera, where they were frozen until they were switched out.
Uriel, being a coward, as per usual.
Turn-by-turn combat
One of the main features that needed to be implemented correctly was the game's turn-by-turn combat, in order to adequately portray the work done by the system designers and give enough feedback to the players to understand each step of the attacking process.
To do so, I had to analyze the way other JRPGs did turn-by-turn combat, such as Final Fantasy IX and Pokémon. From this, I determined the order of actions that happened so that the player would be properly informed of the different events of an attack: choosing an ability, choosing the ability's targets (singular, multiple or affecting all), making the ability animation play, showing damage dealt or healed per target and finally showing potential secondary effects of the ability (stunning, or temperature alteration). The character changing state was especially important in combat, as it also changed what tools they had access to in combat, and changed their role within the team.
In order to correctly be able to sequence actions, multiple methods were called with Action arguments that would be called at the beginning and end of the function, or during it at one point.
I had to closely work with the UX / UI designer in order to properly give the necessary feedback to the player at any given moment during this sequence of actions, which allowed for a pleasant and understandable combat experience.
The character can change from one character to another in the overworld.
All characters have specific interactions with the overworld.
Dialogue system
As per any JRPG worth its salt, we needed to implement a dialogue system that allowed us to adequately portray the characters and their emotional states.
Thanks to our 2D artist, I opted to design a simple system with full-body character portraits that could change, highlighting the currently speaking character.
After the project, I grabbed the basis of this dialogue system, and remade it in-engine using Inkle's Unity plugin to facilitate the creation of more complex dialogues. You can go see it here!
Meet the team
2D artist
Tech artist, Level architect
Clément Tavernier
3D Character artist
Environment artist, Prop artist
VFX artist, Level architect
3D generalist, Prop artist
Narrative designer, Level designer
System designer
UX/UI designer
System designer
Production manager