The first of my two major contributions to this project was the development of a character customization system. This involved collaborating with the team's artists to develop sprites and portraits that would allow the player to choose the appearance that best represents them, both in terms of the body shape/gender of the player character and in terms of the colors that make them up. Customization of this form is important for two main reasons. First, allowing the player to choose how they want to appear in the game allows them to better connect with the character and be more engaged with the content of the game. Second, the inclusion of a character customization option indicates a greater level of polish that improves the overall quality of the game. Further improvements to this aspect of the game would further tie the customization into the dialogue system, allowing the player to name their character and have that selection reflect in the text of the game.

The second major contribution was the design and construction of the game's environments, in which the player gets to wander around their farm and visually gauge the progress that their growing grasp of AI can have. While the overall skeleton of each environment remains the same throughout the course of the game, the changes in set decoration enhance the changes suggested by the dialogue and give more weight to the player's contributions. These minor changes in the environment that indicate the passage of time and the growth of the farm prevent the world from feeling flat and uninteresting, boosting player engagement and improving the visual quality of the game.

The goal of this Jam was to develop an arcade game, defined as being short, replayable, and high-score focused. The replayability of the game is generated both by the high-score focus - as players are encouraged to replay the game to try and obtain a higher score - and by the randomized nature of the game, with each playthrough having different sub-bosses and thus different weapon ugrades spawning. The duration of a round of play is dependent on the skill of the player, as defeat ends the round, and is limited by the spawning of the level's final boss, after which no more enemies spawn and round continues until either the player achieves victory or is defeated.

The Jam themes which this game focuses on are "Constant Drain" and "Bounce Back." The "Constant Drain" theme is explored through the player's energy mechanic, a constantly draining resource which is used to execute powerful attacks and regenerate health. The "Bounce Back" theme is explored in multiple ways: first, in the ability to regain energy through certain actions, such as hitting enemies and catching the Energy Disc attack; second, in the constantly regenerating health which allows the player to 'bounce back' from near death by avoiding enemy attacks; and third, with attacks such as the Energy Disc and the Spin attack which allow the player and enemies to bounce around the arena.

This game was built around the themes of "The Midwest" and "Severe Weather." The "Midwest" theme gave rise to the farming sim aspect of the game, with the "Severe Weather" theme being expressed as the lightning strikes and tornadoes that introduce a level of difficulty to the game.

The player must dodge the constantly spawning hazards while managing the timers of the various crops and goods that the farm produces. Doing so successfully provides the player with the resources to reset the growth of the resources and undo the damage of the storm, with the aim of having enough resources at the end of the game time to stay in business for the next day.

The core mechanic of Stilt Crab is the random growing and shrinking of targets and gauges. By keeping the gauges within the targets, the player earns points and keeps the crab balanced, earning more points the more gauges are currently managed. The goal of the game is to earn the highest score by keeping as many of the gauges within the targets as possible for as long as possible.

Arx Mysterium is currently in development. The current state of the game as released on Itch represents a prototype of the basic movement and combat mechanics that will be present in later iterations of the game.

The purpose of this prototype, in addition to acting as a presentation of progress on the project, is to identify a solid mechanical base for the rest of the game to build on. The single short level included in the prototype showcases a combination of the platforming and combative gameplay elements the player can expect to encounter in the full game in a streamlined environment which allows for testing focused specifically on these mechanics. Through this testing, we can determine whether the game possesses a solid enough base to iterate upon for a full game.

Through future development, the game will see the introduction of more roguelite elements, including more room types and a randomized room order, items and powerups to modify gameplay on a given playthrough, and permanent upgrades to help the players become stronger through multiple playthroughs. These inclusions will expand on the current mechanics to add greater variety to the game and bring it closer to the end goal of a completed game.

My role in the development of this project was as a programmer introducing functionality for the "explore" sections of the game. These portions of the game allow the player to wander around a level, speaking to various non-playable characters to obtain information about the engineering process or context about the in-game situation the player is attempting to resolve. Once the player has obtained the necessary information, the game can transition into the "minigame" sections, which make up the bulk of the gameplay.

Due to the platform on which this game was built - that being an HTML/Javascript web app - a different approach was needed to implement the movement of the player and the scrolling of the background in this game than would be needed to achieve the same effect in a more conventional engine. To achieve this, the screen is comprised of multiple containers, each moving at different speeds according to their order in layer and based on the distance of the player from the edge of the screen to achieve a parallax effect. Combining this with a global coordinate for the player's and other entities' positions within the level allows the player to interact with the NPCs.

As lead programmer on Rosa, I was responsible for the development of the character's movement controls, as well as for the implementation of the various interactable components within the game's levels. The first of these interactable objects is the lore collectibles which the player can find scattered throughout the game. The purpose of these collectibles is to expand on the atmosphere of the game and to provide a greater sense of mystery as the player attempts to piece together the story behind the game. The information gathered from these collectibles can be reviewed through the journal found in the pause menu.

The other two types of interaction make up the puzzle component of the game. The first of these is the box object, which when interacted with is attached to the player until either the player releases the box or it is moved onto the designated receptacle. The second puzzle involves pressing buttons in a given order. The given requirements to complete any level can be learned by interacting with the door at the end of the level. All of these forms of interaction exist for the purpose of leading the players to explore the game's various levels, and to challenge the player's navigational abilities.

Before

After

The project, in the state it was in when my team was brought on board to help, contained most of the base mechanics the client wanted for the game, as well as a large play area with some interesting features. This version of the game did not, however, give the player much information about the game's mechanics or much direction towards how to play the game. Without this information, a player is likely to grow bored with the game before being able to identify what makes the game fun to play. In order to remedy this, we endeavored to establish a new level design that would slowly introduce the relevant mechanics to the player, and add to this a simple tutorial which could help explain controls and introduce mechanics, allowing the player to more quickly identify the fun in the game, increasing player retention.

In the initial version of the game, the player was given control of a mostly established colony of pigeons, with nests built and multiple birds to control. This initial colony was established in a relatively open area of the map with little safety to learn about the game before engaging threats. The updated version starts the player with only a single pigeon in a relatively safe area of the map, and uses tutorial tooltips to walk the player through establishing their first colony. Once the player has completed this initial walkthrough, the player is then encouraged to explore more of the map, with additional tutorial popups informing the player of other mechanics such as the threat of humans or the need for food.

My contribution to this project was the design and implementation of the player controller, including movement, camera control, and the two abilities the player has access to. A third person camera was important to the design, as we wanted the player to be able to view more of their surroundings, and the ability to look around and assess the situation without moving the character itself enables the player to better plan their escape. Two potential movement speeds for the player - implemented through a sprint function - allows the player to have more control of their movement, giving them the opportunity to move slowly and methodically or more quickly as their playstyle and the situation in-game demands.

The player has access to two special abilities - a vision modifier reminiscent of thermal vision and an invisibility effect. These abilities serve two purposes within the game to aid in the player's ability to spot threats and avoid detection. The use of the thermal vision allows the player to better notice enemies which could spot them by highlighting the enemies and their sight cones in red. The invisibility allows the player to briefly avoid detection, giving them a chance to recover from a difficult situation in which they would normally be spotted. Each of these abilities only lasts for a short duration, after which the player must wait before being able to use their abilities again. This prevents overuse of the abilities which could make the game too easy, while still allowing the players to take a more strategic approach to their escape.