University group "game development" project.
Game logo created by my teammate Shannon.
Eden is a point and click side-scrolling adventure game set in a beautiful forest. However, be careful what of your choices because as beautiful this world is as many dangerous secrets it hides inside.
You can find more information and development process on the project website, which you can access by pressing the button below.
Engine: Game Maker
Team size: 5
Duration: Feb 2020 - May 2020
Role(s) and responsibilities
Game Design
We worked on a game design as the whole team (except the team leader) on our weekly work and brainstorming sessions.
- With my team designed the quests and narrative.
- With my team designed the level and its layout.
Art
- Created the spider character assets and animations.
- Created the spider tree and the bush assets.
Game Design
Mechanics
We based our mechanics from those in GDD. A player has two ways of play-style to choose from. He can either complete the tasks given by characters to get their help or kill them to mutate and gain new abilities.
Help path
Help path
Genocide path
Genocide path
Artworks from the GDD made by Alicja Zachwieja
World design
The main antagonist of the whole game is the tiger. The protagonist is the muntjac deer. To defeat the tiger the main character needs to travel through different environments looking for help (or to kill).
After analyzing the GDD, with my team, we agreed on making the vertical slice as the one level of the full game set in a specific environment. We chose the mushroom environment.
Level design
Initial design
At first, we planned to make the vertical slice much bigger, but the lack of time and the pandemic conditions forced us to reduce the scope. We had ideas for four main quests and four optional quests.
Final design
We reduced the scope to only one main quest. Fortunately enough, when the pandemic has started, we were still in the early phase of our project. We didn't have the code or finished assets yet, so there weren't many things we needed to change.
Level planned
Characters
From the begging of our work, we knew that the main quest character that the protagonist encounters will be the frog. The frog was the character in the GDD assigned to the mushroom environment. Because the GDD was lacking details we had to design all of the other characters ourselves.
On our brainstorming sessions, we thought of putting characters as the skunk, the snake, the bird, the rhino and the spider, along with the quests connecting them all. I was responsible for designing the spider quest and spider assets. Because of the pandemic, we had to make the scope smaller and cut out non-important content. We agreed on leaving only the most important parts of the vertical slice. That is why the only quest left is the spider one.
On our brainstorming sessions, we thought of putting characters as the skunk, the snake, the bird, the rhino and the spider, along with the quests connecting them all. I was responsible for designing the spider quest and spider assets. Because of the pandemic, we had to make the scope smaller and cut out non-important content. We agreed on leaving only the most important parts of the vertical slice. That is why the only quest left is the spider one.
First spider character sketches:
Quests and narrative
As mentioned above, there are two ways to play the game: normal or genocide. Both of them start in the same way. The frog asks the protagonist to get her the non-poisonous mushroom.
Normal:
Talk to the frog-> look for the non-poisonous mushroom (you see that the spider has it) -> find the poisonous mushroom in the bush-> swap with the spider -> get the non-poisonous mushroom to the frog-> end of the quest, the frog helps the muntjac
Genocide:
Talk to the frog-> look for the poisonous mushroom -> find the poisonous mushroom in the bush -> give the mushroom to the frog-> the frog dies and the muntjac mutates.
ART
Our lead artist Shannon and lead environment artist Becca created the art bible for the rest of the artists to follow. I analyzed their art examples to help me create the assets I am working on.
My artworks:
PROTOTYPE VS VERTICAL SLICE
With my team we created a vertical slice of the game for windows.
You can download it here or directly from itch website. Unfortunately it works only on windows.