Gameplay footage
Summary: A 3D spellcasting game about a Lotus Shaman adventuring in the land of mana trying to redeem herself of killing her own mother by taking up her mother's job as a shaman and cleanse the corrupted area back to it's original state
Combat Design Contribution
Yume's Combat Abilities Contribution
1. Picking Lotus as the flower for Yume to use
According to budhism, Lotus represents enlightenment and the muddy water represents the turbulence and challenges. This descirption perfectly explained Yume's character where she's a young beginner Resonance,who just inherit her mother great power's who was the previous Resonance weilder, and has to redeeem herself by continue her duty while villagers of the land dislikes her because of her action of killing her own mother.
2. Designing skills for Yume based on the flower growth stages
Based on the flower growth stages, I categorized there are four skills that Yume can use which are Sprouts, Pollination, Bloom and Seeds Dispersal. I dive into each of the stages and come out with a summary of each of the stages does:
a. Sprouts where it represents the seeds is still growing
Combat skills: Grow out vines to grab the enemy, Enemy who got caught will get their health point suck
b. Pollination represents it is a reproduction phase carry by Insects from one flower to another
Combat skills: Summons fireflies that will temporary follow Yume, temporary enhacing her abilities damage and healing output.
c. Bloom helps to produces flower and fruits
Combat skills: Creates a bloom Lotus underneath her to heal herself
d. Seeds Dispersal is to ensure the seeds are spread as far as possible
Combat skills: Summon a ball of Lotus that deals AOE damage when it exploded and the seeds drop backs to the grounds.
Based on the 4 stages, I make it similar how flowers growith stages, the power level for the skills will be start off with first ability being a good introduction for early game until the fourth ability which is the strongest ability to have
Sprout Combat Ability
Pollination Combat Ability
Bloom combat Ability
Seed Dispersal Ability
3. Skills that serve not only combat but exploration purpose
Based on the first 3 stages, I try to make it where it also fits with based on the 4 flower growth stages for Lotus which lead to the design that I came out with:
Sprout Exploration skills: Yume casted sprouts to retracts that dissonance (corrupted) flowers to free the npcs
Pollination Exploration skill: Yume summons fireflies in order to guide Yume to the next path as if the land is guiding her. (Unused)
Bloom Exploaration skill: Yume casted a Lotus underneath her so that she can walk on top of the water to prevent getting corrupted by the dissonance power
Bloom Exploration skill
Sprout Exploration skill
Level Design Contribution
Early draft of the Level for Ghost Flower
Thought process: The goal of the level is to cleanse the dissonance area (enemies) to save npc from distraught and by clearing all of the area grants the player to fight her greatest traumatic experience, which is her mother where she was forced to kill her due to her mother turning into a dissonance. Therefore, The initial design of the level is to get player to familiarise with each places of the game will look like and which landmarks should the player look for when naviagating the level. Next the uses of different trees and same flowers when you're near an enemy area was designed without trying to break the immersion of the player as the level is in a natural habital kind of level as the screenshot of the early build show below:
Early prototype of the Level for Ghost Flower
The ueses of flowers in each area is different with the others while using boulders in showing where player is
Final outcome of the Level for Ghost Flower
However, the early build for the level was then scrapeed due to not feeling like a natural habitat type of level but a garden type of level as it felt more linear and the trees placement are too tidy(no sense of variation of props).
Therefore, the level was adjusted based on the initial drafts which have 2 sides and references pictures that we take during our trip at taman botani and forest references which resulted in the picture above, more open and feels more in a natural habitat. The level started off at the player start at the plain field at the top of the hill, showing that Yume is having a downtime for herself before heading out to carry out her duty where she was approach by an NPC where dissonance started to appear out of nowhere.
In order not to make player feels lost within the level, I have placed sakura trees and Tori gate as the main landmarks to look for as it indicates this is the enemy area and there are people needs to be save.
Not only that, the flowers and soil texture serve as an important aspect on helping player to naviagate as when the player is at a new area, the flowers will be different so players can know where they are where the soil texture will have a little purple within the soil symbolise corruption within the area. Lastly, the npc is placed near the area to indicate the villagers are seeking help from her and the enemies are nearby the area
When near an enemy territory, the uses of same flower and npc can be seen to let player know where they are and npc is to indicate enemy territory.
When near an enemy territory, corrupted area can be seen having dark purple texture
Project Timeline Contribution
Project Timline Thought Process: When setting up the schedule for each members, I first based around on what's the primary features that have to be completed for the alpha build where the industry developers, juniors and senior students will come to play our game and provide feedback to us on what can be improved on so we are geared up on event showcase. From those feedback I would create a new category for iteration and feedback section where the features will need to fix or improve before working on other features. I would also categorized the other good to have or nice to have feature as secondary feature to work on once all the primary feature is done. However, I also take this time to scale down the project which require to cancel some features while maintaining the same vision for the game if some of our members are feeling burn out or current primary feature is still not completed or need more refinement so that the final beta build looks more polish and experience friendly towards player.
Challenges & Biggest Takeaway
1. Ensure player would not get lost in the game
The biggest challenge of this entire project due forest in real life is feels seamless and it's open world, therefore players would get lost easily within the world. Furtheremore, the lack of props due to lesser artist in the team make it more challenging to ensure player is not lost. Thus, we decided as a team to put big landmarks such as tori gate and sakura trees along with flowers in new region can lower the possibility of player getting lost. However, the biggest take away from the creating the level is to have lesser area within the map depending on the artist strengths which can make the player more memorable in playing the game.
2. Scale down when project scope to prevent burn out:
The project duration is around 6 months and when we are on the second phase of the project (3 months), I decided to make the call of scaling down on the project scope and focus on polishing the features around week 9 due to some of our member were experiencing burnt out and some features can ruin player's experience of the game. It is tough decisions to make as some features that was crucial to the game's experience but unable to implement due to members facing burnt out but looking back scaling down is the best choice of decisions as it help polish out features which makes the game more completed than the team origianlly think.