NECROSHIFT
CONCEPT
Prototyping the Core Gameplay Loop.
To define the game’s direction, each team member created a prototype exploring body-snatching with varied uses, genres, and playstyles.
My prototype focused on combat, where progress depended on snatching bodies with the right abilities and health is inherited as an additional strategic challenge.
The final Core Gameplay Loop
We combined my combat-focused prototype with a teammate’s puzzle focused prototype, creating a top-down body-snatching game featuring short combat encounters, key abilities, and disposable bodies.
DEVELOPMENT
Conceptualizing the Enemies
Challenges
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Creating enemy abilities that function for both combat and progression while staying within a reasonable scope.
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Balancing the interactions between different abilities.
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Making sure no ability greatly overpowers another.
Solution
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We assigned only one ability per enemy to help players grasp mechanics quickly.
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We restricted player movement so that abilities like jumping or dashing were advantages unique to certain bodies.
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Each ability was designed with an attack, defence and puzzle solving aspect in mind.
Conceptualizing the Boss Fight
Challenges
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Introducing a new challenge to the gameplay loop.
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Encouraging and enabling continuous body swapping.
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Ensuring the player always has a corpse to possess as they cannot fight while they're in ghost form.
Solutions
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In contrast to the rest of the game where abilities are only provided when needed, the boss fight challenges players to identify the need of certain abilities on their own.
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For clear signposting, the boss has two states; the "Hostile" state when the player should dodge and the "Roaming" state when the player can attack. Different bodies excel in different states.
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A few enemies are spawned during the "Roaming" state to resupply the player with bodies, add a strategic element and maintain immediate pacing.
CONTRIBUTIONS
Combat Design
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Player
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Conceptualized the rules for the possession mechanic and the ghost form.
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Prototyped the core gameplay mechanic
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Enemies & Abilities
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Conceptualized the enemy abilities and how they work for attack, defence and puzzles.
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Boss Fight
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Wrote the Technical specifications for the boss
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Paper prototyped the boss encounter
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Conceptualized the boss fight, the boss' states and the abilities.
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Balanced enemy spawners, damage, speed, frequency and pauses for each attack.
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Narrative
- Story telling
- Wrote the story for the game.
- Implemented the lore through assets and environmental clues with strict resource limitations.
- Concepted, storyboarded and wrote a cutscene that unfortunately was cut.
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Game Writing
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Named the game
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Wrote and implemented the dialogues.
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UI Design
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Functionality
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Used post processing to implement a yellow outline indication on possessable corpses.
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Coded the functionality of the same outline.
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Coded the UI widgets including the HUD.
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Created Menus
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Visuals
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Drew the UI art
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Imported and implemented the font.
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Designed the HUD and the menus.
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REFLECTION
I had a lot of fun working on this project and while I learned a lot about dynamic UI, I feel like the biggest lesson was on Team Dynamics. Communication, Constructive criticism, and transparency is so important for each and everyone to grow and I will be remembering that thanks to this project.