Sprint 1 - Let the Adventure Begin!

The Basic Idea

We agreed on th concept of a single player adventure game in which you take on the role of a community of spirits from an ancient civilization. Together, you control a magical golem to cleanse a lifeless world from the destructive influence of cosmic deities - so that you may finally pass on to the afterlife.

This game is planned as our final bachelor project that can be continued on after graduation, therefore we had to set strict limitations on what the game "demo" is supposed to contain for our bachelor deadline. These restrictions might be changed along the way. For now, we're aiming for:

• A combat encounter that is thoughtfully designed from start to finish
• Implementation of a combat system with attacks for both player and enemies
• Design of at least the protagonist and antagonist for the combat encounter, including 3D models, animations, and textures
• Visual design of the abilities for both sides
• Development of an environment where the battle takes place
• Intentional composition of the scene using assets and textures to make the world’s story tangible 
• Objects that change based on the player's input

Specification

Now we needed to specify what this game is supposed to look and feel like in the end. We created a Moodboard for the visuals and brainstormed what Abilities were going to be in the game and how the mechanical and atmospherical feeling of a community as the protagonist should come into play.

These basic ideas then got fleshed out during the two weeks of the sprint.

Characters

The Idea for the golem is to have it be an assortment of different pieces of rubble and broken down ruins of the ancient civilization held together and inhabited by the community of souls. The character shouldn't look like it was designed for a purpose but more so be consisting of parts that are were assorted to serve the purpose the soul community needs. 

In order to prepare for playtesting a rough 3D-blockout and animation were created rather early on.

Environment

The Environment was designed with two states in mind: Corrupted and Uncorrupted, the corrupted version being the world the player starts in. By defeating enemies and loosening the grip of the cosmic entities  the soul community can slowly return the world into it's uncorrupted state.

Additionally, the shape language of the ruins of the ancient civilisation was experimented with.

Mechanics

We decided to separate the control of the main Golem and the Spirit creatures onto the two joysticks of the controller. The control over camera movement would be relinquished during the time the small souls were sent out and the camera would turn follow the spirits around the scene.  A first prototype for a move was created. A Spline that attaches to enemies and can be tied around multiple through correct placement of the small spirits. We even managed to implement and untie function. This will allow us to experiment with different effects and functions of this basic concept during combat in the future.