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HellSoul

Dungeon Crawler

Role

Game Designer, Project Manager

& Narrative Designer

Timeframe

6 Weeks (Spring 2022)

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

Team

Design & Blueprint:

Azra Vegar

Eira Saastamoinen

Niklas Pålsson

3D:

Akharadet Ekchanok

Ermioni Pavlidou

João Tavares Kalva

Marie Walden

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Game Description

HellSoul, a top-down dungeon crawler. There you play as a blacksmith and helping her take her sold soul and lover back from the depths of hell. 

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Beat and forge until revenge is yours.

Pillars

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Combat

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Hammer combat, melee hit, throw and hammer down.

To fight demons and interact with objects and obstacles in the levels

Forge

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Collect the different pieces of your soul and forge them together to progress through the narrative and the three levels.

Game Design

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In the forging book you find recipes, using this to track progress and find the reagents needed to proceed and reforge her soul by using her anvil. Collect and store items in the storage chest, summon these two objects at will and proceed to craft as you traverse deeper in hell til your soul is fully restored.

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Wielding her heavy blacksmithing hammer, fight your way through the hellish ghouls that infests hell as you explore and collect necessary regents.

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If the enemies hit you too many times, you will die and respawn close to where you fell. It's hell, we are all dead here anyways. Mostly using this method was so the player do not have to backtrack and do the same thing over and over again, created more flow in the gameplay.

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Melee attack

Attack without cooldown, use in close combat.

Three different animations for variations in the hit.

Combat 

Using the different combat attacks to destroy enemies and interact with obstacles. Balancing the more powerful attacks with cooldowns making more variation in the gameplay.

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Final 

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First 

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Beta 

Throw Hammer

Throw hammer and deal damage to multiple enemies on the way from you and on the way back. Cooldown with two seconds. 

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Final 

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First 

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Hammer Down

Hit multiple enemies in a area. Longest cooldown but deals the most damage.

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Beta 

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UI & UX

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Final

For the HUB we needed to show the player health, anvil and the two combat moves, throw and hammer down. 

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Showing the cool down and when the anvil can be summon. 

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First iteration

For the first sketch we had a second bar under the HP bar. In the earily stages of the production we had a second chance mode "Hysteria" where when the player goes down to 0 in HP they activate and needs to kill more enemies to gain HP back. This was something we removed since it was hard to convey for the player what was happening. I replaced it with a health potion. 

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Sketch

Main Menu

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Sketch

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For the main menu we decided for a simple layout. I made a sketch that we could follow when implementing it into the project. 

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Having an options menu for sound. Controls for showing the controls of the game before they started the game. 

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For the final version we added a fire and smoke background that fitted the hellish theme and changed the logo that fitted our style more.

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Final

AI - Enemies

The enemies go towards the player and does a melee attack to damage the player. 

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Using cloth physics we took inspiration from the Dementors in the Harry Potter, giving the unknown atmosphere. 

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When an enemy is killed they drop essence that the player can pick and use for forging their soul piece back together. 

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Each level has specific type tied to the level that drops essence tied to that level.

  • Limbo - Purple toned, Limbo essence.

  • Heresy - Red toned, Heresy essence.

  • Treachery - Blue toned, Treachery essence.

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Enemy movement & cloth physics

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Spawn Triggers

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Spawning system

The enemies get spawn by a trigger box and target points placed out by the navmesh, where 3-6 enemies spawn per target point. 

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With a delay of 15 seconds, new enemies spawn from the same target point. 

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Using this to balance out how many enemies spawn at the same time and also never making the levels empty from enemies. 

First spawn

Narrative

Not having a fully good character but that the players can relate to, making mistakes and wrong decisions in your life. 

Starting with a intro sequence to explain why she goes to hell and give the player motivation and context to what they are suppose to do and why.

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Go through the different levels of hell to find her sold soul and find her lover waiting at her in the end.

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Having a female blacksmith as main character was something we got inspiration thinking about the combat and forging system,

how she would forge her soul together and fight with her hammer. 

Intro sequence

Project Management

  • Daily Standup.

  • Priority list with must have, should have and want to have.

  • Daily communication with everyone in the team.

  • Individual meetings.

  • Scoping after the team size and knowledge.

  • Sprint planning.

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