AERIAL_KNIGHT'S WE NEVER YIELD
MY ROLE
Technical game designer and generalist.
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Initially, I worked on prototyping systems for the game's levels using C#.
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Leveraging my blend of technical and design skills, I was moved on to tackling general issues.
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This included supporting with UI, font localisation, implementing cutscenes, and more.
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Most of my work was designing and implementing engaging obstacles using VFX, camera shake, and custom animations.
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This culminated in the project lead sharing clips of my work to garner interest in the game, stating "Stuff like this gets me excited".
DESCRIPTION
Discover pulse-pounding stylized parkour action as you run, jump, smash, and slide through an afro-futurist-inspired kingdom. Enjoy a single-player or two-player local cooperative mode and experience the story of two brothers and their unexpected return to their lost kingdom.
YEAR & PROJECT LENGTH
2024 - ~12 months
GENRE
Action, Adventure, Runner
PLATFORM
Engine
Unity
TEAM SIZE
This was a co-development project, so I'm unsure on the total team size, but I estimate ~10-15.
PROTOTYPING AND VISUAL CUES
TECHNICAL WORK & PROTOYPING
My technical expertise was primarily used early in the project, when developing proof-of-concept prototypes of the game's systems. This is most obvious in my work on the destructible attack obstacles, where I scripted a system that would swap a dummy model for a broken model, and explode the broken model upon the player characters hitting a collider, creating the effect of destruction. This system was then handed to the engineering team who optimised and refined it, before it was applied to several attack obstacles throughout the game.
Later in development I was also regularly tasked with bug fixing and often leveraged my technical skills to read and understand systems developed by others. After understanding how the system was built, I was then able to diagnose the cause of the bug and tweak the code accordingly or, in some cases, inform the engineering team of the cause of the bug so that they could implement the fix themselves.
KEY DESIGN CHALLENGES
The majority of my design work focused on obstacle design and polishing. Due to the limited player agency within the game's core loop (players can only jump, slide, attack, and dash), this work's central design challenge was creating dynamic, visually attractive, and engaging obstacles that would hold the player's attention despite the limited actions they could take.
Simultaneously, as players had to complete specific inputs for each obstacle (slide, jump, and attack), it was also important that obstacles provided enough time for players to see, comprehend, and complete the required input. Therefore, telegraphing obstacles and feeding forward were also essential considerations for a smooth gameplay experience.
ADDRESSING THESE CHALLENGES
I tackled both challenges by implementing visual cues, VFX, camera shake, and creating small custom animations where necessary.
Alongside the pre-existing colour coding for the obstacle variants, for some obstacles, I implemented text prompts that would appear just before the player needed to complete a specific input. This helped significantly with obstacles that could surprise the player by arriving on-screen quite late due to restrictions with the gameplay camera angle, providing an additional few seconds for players to compute, understand, and react to the upcoming obstacle.
Simultaneously, through the use of camera shake, animations, and VFX, I was able to craft a much more engaging experience for players. These elements added much-needed juice and dynamism to the moment-to-moment gameplay and helped hold the player's attention as they waited to time their next input. Much of these additions also supported the narrative wrapper for the current level or scene. Animated golem attacks, scorpion tails, and falling rubble all aligned with the game's story and created a sense of "running through danger" that the project lead wanted to establish.
Evolution of Destructible Attack Obstacles
Additional Obstacle Showcase
Game Trailer