A former UCA gradaute following his creative passions in game jams, artwork and mods.
Marionette
Marionette is the first project I underwent in a team, playing the role of the lead developer/designer despite no definef roles being issued. Our brief was to create a
'vertical slice' of a 2D game that wasn't a sidescroller. From this I brainstormed making a traditional point-and-click adventure game, but then I decided to try something interesting: add RPG elements.
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I began investigating this idea by concepting how the gameplay would look in a quick doodle on MSPaint, despite the questionable choice in program it did wonders in visualizing the idea I had in mind, and convinced the gameplay idea to my group.
Through our group meetings, we developed the game's concept, simplifying the original proposed idea (random generation, level system etc.) into something doable for the time allocated, as well as for my skills in coding at the time.
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Furthermore, we established the setting, art-style, tone and story for the game: as opposed to a traditional RPG featuring a high-fantasy world, this game would take place in the underground of Victorian-Era London. This came about as the lead artist designed concepts for the lead character being a doll named, one that had gained consciousness and had become seperated from their owner (Anette).
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This made the game feel a lot more unique, tying in with it's even more unique gameplay style. Soon after, we had created a paper prototype to demonstrate the flow of the game:
The player would navigate and interact with the world like a standard point-and-click, clicking on an enemy will bring up a pre-battle menu to select their weapon. In combat, the player must time their click with the sliding bar to attack/defend. Although the combat is basic, this could easily be expanded upon, for example introducing more types of attacks that are tied the weapon type, using items etc. but for this current brief, it was beyond our scope.
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After this, I concepted the map of the vertical slice and also what sprites would need to be drawn for the character (Which was cut down due to the artist's lack of experience in animation)
This did come with a few issues however, as the 3D colliders, camera and 2D sprites would not sync up well, this was likely due to my lack of experience in coding at the time.
Due to the nature of the brief, every member of our group was required to create art assets and write code, as a result this led to a slight clash in styles, as we had not have an art bible for this project. However, the core tone is carried well.
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The final game, although short and a little buggy, was a good first step in developing my skills within a team as a designer, the vertical slice gave clear insight as to what our vision was. Each member found themselves naturally drawn to their respective roles, we communicated well and we maintained our passion throughout. This concept is something I am very interested in revisiting some day.
Artwork by:
Ashlee Page, Mathias Holmes and Ezle Nel