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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.
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My prototype focused on combat, where progress depended on snatching bodies with the right abilities and health is inherited as an additional strategic challenge.
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.
The Final
Gameplay Loop
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.
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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.
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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.
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
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​Story telling
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Wrote the story for the game.
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Concepted, storyboarded and wrote a cutscene that unfortunately was cut. ​
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Implemented the lore through assets and environmental clues with strict resource limitations.
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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.