System designer
Tech designer
IN CHARGE OF:
Designing and implementing Traversal features
Designing and implementing the Dialogue system
Designing and implementing the AI decision trees
Designing and implementing the Boss enemy
Designing and implementing 3Cs
Don't Let Them Cook!
Cinematic platformer / Unreal / 4 weeks
A wacky platformer in which you escape from giant cats!
A wacky platformer in which you escape from giant cats!
The player character dashing, switch jumping and double jumping.
The player dashes straight above the boss' attack.
Boss design
Our boss, the chef, is designed to act as a tutorial for how bosses will work for the rest of the game. This is why we focused on clean, easily-interpretable attacks that were reminiscent of other games, so that the player could easily understand what was going on.
The boss also uses many forms of feedback to indicate to the player how and when they are attacking, from the color of their flashing eyes, the position of their hands, and the animations they play when aiming, locking in and finally striking.
The camera unzooms to properly show the environment.
Traversal features
In order to bring a fluid platforming experience to the player, we needed to design intuitive and precise traversal features. Basing ourselves off of games such as Hollow Knight, we opted to design walljumping and dashing as well as a few other features such as switch jumping.
We wanted players to be able to quickly traverse levels as they saw fit, and make movement easily accessible all the while allowing more skilled players to shine. By mixing different traversal techniques, skilled players would be able to get to more difficult-to-reach places and acquire secrets hidden throughout the levels.
We also wanted traversal features to flow from one to another easily, which is why dashing follows the curvature of the ground to prevent blocking and why walljumps prevent the player from immediately changing direction in the air for a short time to facilitate sequences of quick inputs.
Since our game focused on the usage of multiple characters and their different abilities to move around, we designed switch jumping as a way to further increase a player's ability to traverse levels, scaling with the number of current characters in their party.
The design of one of the boss' attacks, and its rendition in the final build.
Character and camera
As per any platformer, what the player sees and wants to see is very important to allow a feeling of fluidity in gameplay and avoid frustration. While the default camera we designed is zoomed-out and uses "look forward" to allow for a sense of scale and give the information necessary for a player to move, we also used camera modifiers that were applied in certain scenes to further increase legibility or focus on certain areas.
Liberal use of camera modifiers allowed us to grant our level designers tools to focus on various aspects of a level, but also made us more creative in the ways that our camera could be used for a more cinematic effect.
Meet the team
2D artist
Environment artist
3D Prop artist
3D Character artist, Composer
VFX artist, Level architect
3D Character artist
Level designer
Level designer
Production manager
System designer