Shine a Way - Insight

As an electrician you just want to do your job: fix the light. But experiments hide within this secret laboratory and block your path. A drone will help you to shine a light and figure out a way in this dark place.

Overview

"Shine A Way" was the first semester project.

The task was to make a platformer game with a twist in Godot. It turned out early on that the jumping behavior was the most important thing besides our special mechanics. It was important to me that the player wasn't too frustrated with the character's movement. To keep aircontrol our jump has some floatiness. The reason for the speed is to be able to move fast enough away from enemies and to be able to make further jumps without disorienting the player in the dark.

The following page merely highlights some aspects of what I did for this project.

Content:

      Genre: 2D-Platformer
      Engine: Godot 3.5
      Team Size: 7
      Duration: 10 Weeks
      Completion: February 2023
      Platform: PC
      Tools used: Godot, Photoshop, Interlinked Google Docs as Wiki, Drawio, Trello

Role(s) and Responsibilities:

  • Game Design: I concepted and designed the idea of using light to reveal and activate platforms as well as designed the Enemies.
  • Game Art: Support of the art department with skeches and made the feedback for checkpoints, moving platforms and switches.
  • Sound: Selecting references and source sounds. Cutting, mixing, implementing and iterating.
  • Game Design Lead: Keeping the Team informed about changes and cuts. Decided on cutting content while keeping the game feel coherent.
  • UI/UX: Creation and iteration of the screenflow and wireframe. I also ensured that each element was implemented in a consistent style.

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Game Design

Apart from the moving platforms and activators, I was responsible for designing all the gameplay elements of the game. While our task for this student project was to develop a platformer, I wanted to incorporate a stealth mechanic, but in reverse: discover platforms to be able to jump on them. The theme is a dark laboratory with failed experiments, so I also designed several enemies/obstacles called "entities". The light mechanics were changed a lot, as was the interaction with the enemies. The timing had to be right and it had to be clear to the player what they could do when they spotted a platform. The simple rule I came up with was: if you see it, you can jump on it.

Shine A Way - Gameplay Concept - Toni Winkler

Shine A Way - Gameplay Concept - Toni Winkler

Shine A Way - Player Character State Machine - Toni Winkler

 

Game Feel - SFX

The dark setting required an intensive use of sounds. For the enemies, I initially went for obscure animal sounds like leopard seals, but later changed it to something reminiscent of the creatures being hurt by the light. I used spatial SFX to give the lab its eerie sound with some vaariations. When the player steps on a creature, there's this squishy sound to signal that it's not safe.

 

Enemy Design

We planned to have over 5 different entities which all reacted differently to the player character and their drone. Some entities were simple obstacles like a door reacting to light or a dead zone and some were easily identifiable as enemies. Two flying enemies were designed from which one made it into the game.

An essential entity was the platform which went through various iterations. At some playtest we implemented three different versions to ensure we pick the clearest version that doesn't destroy the feel of the game. Assets of a rejected version made it into the game as the moving platforms.

Shine A Way - Enemy Behaviour - Toni Winkler

Shine A Way - Enemy Behaviour - Toni Winkler

 

Ui / UX

I made the Screenflow and the Wireframe for the UI because we had no dedicated UI/UX Designer. I also gave orientation points for Art to create the HUD element of the Drone. Late in production, I fixed alignment issues and the color palette to ensure a consistent style.

Shine A Way - Screenflow - UI/UX - Toni Winkler

 

Support for other Departments - Production

During the pre-production phase, I created a tree diagram that contained all the desired or required functions with broken down parts (stories). This diagram was used to create the backlog.

Shine A Way - Production Support - Assets Needed - Toni Winkler

 

Support for other Departments - Game Art

I made sketches for the concept art and animations of the enemies according to the references we had laid out beforehand.

Shine A Way - Enemy Concept - Toni Winkler Shine A Way - Enemy Concept - Toni Winkler

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