Development Info Role: Lead Designer - Combat/Skill System, Enemy Encounters, Level Design Team Size: 3 Time: 10 Months Tech: Construct 2 Platform: PC/Mac - Shipped October 2017 Genre: Adventure, Dungeon Crawler |
Responsibilities
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Gameplay Trailer
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Game Stream by AJPuzzleFerret
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Game Overview
Secrets of Arcadia is a 1-2 player retro-style dungeon crawler. Develop your character through various combinations of combat skills that help you fight your way to the center of the world... where you must save a child that is being used to power a corrupt Utopian civilization. There are four characters in the game, but no restrictive classes. Players can choose any character and equip almost any skill to that character! Yes, that means you can shoot arrows out of your hammer. This can make every playthrough of the game different because the players will have many different options.
Design Process
Inspiration
We took inspiration from games that had great multiplayer gameplay, but also had a strong single-player experience. It was important to us that our game included both a single-player and multiplayer experience. As a big fan of games similar to this, I was very excited to begin this project. However, I wanted to do something different from anything I have played before. That is why we allow players to purchase and equip almost any skill from the skill shop, regardless of which character they choose. We didn't want to force restrictions onto the player. We wanted them to be able to play how they wanted and try out many different combinations of skills.
We took inspiration from games that had great multiplayer gameplay, but also had a strong single-player experience. It was important to us that our game included both a single-player and multiplayer experience. As a big fan of games similar to this, I was very excited to begin this project. However, I wanted to do something different from anything I have played before. That is why we allow players to purchase and equip almost any skill from the skill shop, regardless of which character they choose. We didn't want to force restrictions onto the player. We wanted them to be able to play how they wanted and try out many different combinations of skills.
Combat & Balancing
This was extremely important to get right and quite difficult, especially since we had to account for single-player runs and 2-player runs. We spent many hours having different people playtest the combat system and adjust the controls, skills, damage and health numbers, and overall feel based on their feedback. Since we had two melee-based characters and two ranged-based characters, we had to figure out the appropriate balance for how much damage they would deal and how much health they each had. |
Level Design
We spent a lot of time refining the levels as best as we could. The first level we designed was way too open. Players could weave in and out of incoming enemies and there was nothing to force them into combat. We then decided to go with a "room to room" approach, in which there were rooms of various sizes separated from each other with narrow hallways leading the players throughout the map. This became our formula for how each level henceforth would be designed, but we still had the problem of players being able to simply run by enemies and exit the dungeon. We then decided to set up triggers in each enemy room that would lock the player in until they defeated all of the enemies in that room. Players still had the choice of whether or not they wanted to explore the entire map of the dungeon, but if they came across a room with enemies, they were forced into combat. Once we figured that part out, we began a steady workflow of creating levels that was a collaboration between myself and another designer, Warren. While Warren's main focus was on audio design, he would also create the initial 2D layouts of each level and hand them off to me. Since I had many other tasks on my plate, this was very useful for me as I could focus on other elements of the game in the meantime. When a level was ready to be implemented, I would re-create his layouts in-engine, populate them with assets and enemy spawners, design trap rooms to break up the game's pacing, and continue to iterate from there. |
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Economy
For a long time while developing this game, the gem values that you could find in the game were 5, 10, 15, and 20. In our initial design document, we made a list of each possible skill we wanted to include in the skill shop and how much we thought each one would cost. The most expensive skill we had documented at that time would have only cost around 1200 gems. We knew this system was not going to be accurate until we ran plenty of playtests to figure out how much gems players were actually picking up. Once we had finished implementing every skill into the game, some players found that they were only getting enough gems to buy 1 or 2 skills, and this would be towards the end of their run that they finally had enough gems. Additionally, it didn't feel very rewarding to earn gems that seemed to be of such low value. We then adjusted the prices and gem values in order to allow the player to start purchasing skills very early on. We increased the gem values to 25, 50, 75, 100, and 1000 for a special diamond if you clear the entire map. We increased the skill prices and separated them into 6 price categories based on their effectiveness: 500, 1000, 1500, 3000, 4500, and 6000. Since there were plenty of gems to pick up on each level, players could quickly earn enough gems to buy 3 or 4 skills by the end of the second level. |
Post-Mortem
What Went Well
I am incredibly proud of myself and my teammates on what we have been able to accomplish over the past 9 months. Would I have liked to include more content in the game? Of course. Would I have benefited from having more time to design and polish the game? Absolutely. Is the game the absolute best that it can be? No, probably not. But we gave everything we had in the small amount of time that we had to try and create something amazing, and I think we succeeded in that.
- The unrestricted skill system proved to be a unique and fun system for players to use. Players seemed to have fun with trying out several different combinations.
- Local co-op play was important to us and it turned out great. Playing with a friend or family member makes the experience that much more fun, and I'd say was definitely worth the effort, as challenging as it was to balance and implement.
- Using the Construct 2 game engine allowed us to quickly prototype and implement features very quickly.
- Our scope was just too big and we had to cut a lot of things out. Local co-op was once a 2 to 4 player feature, rather than just 2 players, for example. The fact is that when trying to develop a game in school, you get hit with tons of other life responsibilities (work, other classes, family, etc.) and it is impossible to work on it as much as you would like. If we had started out with a much smaller scope and reached the Beta version by the end of the first semester, I think we could have polished the game a lot more and reduced overall stress.
- A few skills did not get the design attention they needed to be fully polished, which as a result, makes them less exciting to use compared to others.
- While the development workflow in Construct 2 was pretty good, the publishing options were limited and porting to Xbox One was a tough challenge that we ultimately were not able to complete.
I am incredibly proud of myself and my teammates on what we have been able to accomplish over the past 9 months. Would I have liked to include more content in the game? Of course. Would I have benefited from having more time to design and polish the game? Absolutely. Is the game the absolute best that it can be? No, probably not. But we gave everything we had in the small amount of time that we had to try and create something amazing, and I think we succeeded in that.