NECROSHIFT
CONCEPT
Core Gameplay loop
The core gameplay loop is based around body snatching with heavy emphasis on short combat encounters and light puzzle challenges.
CONTRIBUTION
My biggest contribution was the boss fight at the end of the game.
Phases
Core gameplay mechanic in boss fight
I wanted to challenge the players use of the core gameplay mechanic in a familiar but more challenging way, so I divided the boss fight into short phases where the player would benefit from using different bodies depending on the phase. I also added an enemy wave, so that the player would always have an opportunity to resupply on corpses.
Creating a combat loop
I implemented the order of the phases and realised that the pacing felt slow and dragged out as the player would either just be running around or spamming the attack button. To solve this, I merged the avoidance and attack phases and increased the speed of the boss. I shortened the time of each phase and finally, I had a pace I was satisfied with.
Solving soft locks and other issues
Free corpses
The biggest challenges we faced in production were soft locks. Because the player cannot attack in their ghost form, they would always be at risk of not having a body to posses and ultimately die or get stuck. To solve this problem in the boss fight, we had planned to spawn a singular random corpse into the arena if the player had become a ghost and there were no corpses to possess. This sadly did not make it into the game so we placed extra soldier corpses around the arena instead.
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.