REALM KEEPER
Genre:
Engine:
Team Size:
Duration:
Platform:
Third-person, Fantasy, Roguelike
Unity
12
October 2020 - May 2021
PC
Realm Keeper is a fantasy dungeon crawler with set levels that players can adventure through as they complete runs of the game. The player goal is to defeat enemies to spawn the boss that players will have to defeat to progress through the levels. Through the levels they will pick up items within the world that will change the dynamic of the gameplay experience with the items affecting various stats of the player.
Our team's goals when designing Realm Keeper was to create a roguelike game that consisted of multiple levels, player characters and enemies with all characters and enemies having unique abilities to add to the gameplay dynamic. We chose a cartoon art style and visual aesthetic for the game and designed the UI, levels, items, player characters and enemies to this art style. We also incorporated original music and together with the visual aesthetic and gameplay design strived to create a complete gameplay experience for the player. Overall we worked to create a capstone project for our team's final trimester at University that showcased the skills we have learnt throughout our degree.
ROLE(S) AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Game Design
- Created a cartoon style roguelike experience consisting of multiple characters, levels and enemies.
- Collaborated on the aesthetic of characters, enemies and levels.
Level Design
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Designed the gameplay levels from molecular diagrams to the layouts.
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Greyboxed the base environment based on the created layout using Maya.
UI Design
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Designed and made the layout of the various menus within the game.
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Made UI assets for the game including character ability icons, buttons, UI backgrounds and borders.
Logo Design
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Created the Logo for the game and the group.
Programming
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Programmed the in-game pause menu in all scenes.
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Programmed the functionality of the Main Menu scene.
GAME DESIGN
When designing Realm Keeper our group looked at various roguelikes and how they approached staples of the roguelike genre. From which we took inspiration from and started to decide what core mechanics we wanted to incorporate into our game. From this we decided to create four player characters for the player to choose from with nine abilities eight of which would be switched out, three unique gameplay levels each with three enemies one of which is a boss for the level along with one hub world for the player to start in and seventeen unique items that affect the players stats. The number of player characters were to allow variety and give the player a different experience with each character to encourage replayability of the game. This was also encouraged by the customisation of abilities that each character would have after these abilities were unlocked through gameplay. When it can to the levels we chose set level as due to the 3D nature of the game this would be easier to achieve in the timeframe than creating a modular design that would change each time. The different enemies were to add variety and so each level felt like a unique self contained room. The items were designed to add more customisation to the players experience of the game and add a greater degree of possible experiences when completing new runs. The player's end goal of a run was to kill a set number of enemies to spawn the boss after which the player would have to defeat to then progress to the next level. Everything found by the player when completing the game was to be recorded in the logbook which would allow players to read more information on the characters, enemies and items found. This logbook was found in the hub world along with a place for players to change character and the abilities of these characters. Players would spawn in the hub world after they died in a run.
When it came to the aesthetic and visual style of the game the group decided on a cartoon art style with the game having elements of fantasy in the character and level visual designs. A design choice brought up by one of the concept artists was having animal features across all the enemies in the game as a visual distinction between the player characters and the enemies. Along with this each character had their own unique colour pallet that is reflected in their visual design and abilities.
Unfortunately due to the composition of the group there were only two programmers and two game designers in the whole group that made completing the original design impossible within the given time frame so the project was scaled back removing one player character, one level and the enemies in that level making them all stretch goals. This was to reduce the level of programming work as well as reduce the number of animations required for the different player character and enemy models in the game.
LEVEL DESIGN
When designing the various gameplay levels for Realm Keeper I first looked at other roguelikes with set levels to get an idea of how they approached designing small self contained levels for combat. Along with this the group came up with the three concepts for the different levels, these being a cave, floating islands and a rocky lava filled environment. Moodboards for the visual aesthetic of these levels were created and passed to the concept artists to work on some designs for possible assets in these levels. With the initial concepts I went about it by considering the areas the player would fight enemies and worked to incorporate open spaces/rooms to allow players enough rooms to move through the environment while fighting enemies comfortably while also ensuring that players are able to see various pathways through the levels. For all the levels I started with a molecular flow diagram to consider player pathing as well as possible sizes for the spaces looking to ensure that there were larger and small areas for variety while ensuring these didn’t impact the gameplay experience. From the initial flow diagrams I then worked to position the molecules in interesting ways after which I used the flow diagrams as the foundations for the level layout diagrams.
Working on the cave level called the Underground Cavern I wanted to keep with the cave theme but understood that constant hallways limit the players vision and can create repetitive and boring gameplay. To combat this I created the level around a central lake which allowed players to see across from all three of the larger rooms. This helped to give players a sense of the level's scale as well as give players the vision to see where the level's boss spawned. This helped to open up the environment and not make it feel claustrophobic while also keeping within the theme. Once I had designed the level layout I worked to create the level greybox using Maya for an easy transfer process to the modeller that would work on refining the details. In this level the main assets were stalactites, stalagmites and mushrooms which were used to make the level come to life.
The next level was the floating islands level called the Forgotten Plains. This level was a bit easier to make as the visual design made the level very open in design meaning players have clear vision on the enemies found in this level. The main element I played with when designing this level was the height of the different islands in the level to give variation and height to the level. Once I had completed the level layout I worked on the greybox in Maya and handed it off to the modeller for refinement. The main assets used in this level were trees and rocks.
The final playable level which was pushed back and set as a stretch goal due to time constraints was the rocky lava level called Infernal Fields. This level was designed differently to the previous two as the boss only had one possible spawn location which had to be in the centre of the level in a volcano per the design brief. To ensure that this location was visible to players I made use of height to showcase the importance of this area with the volcano being raised higher than all the surrounding land masses. I also designed these surrounding land masses this way to ensure that players had enough space to fight the enemies to summon the boss. This level design went through two interactions as the original design was too large in size so I had to scale it back and made use of the previous level designs to get a sense of scale. Once I had completed the second iteration of the level layout diagram I went to work creating the level greybox in Maya after which it was decided to scale back on the project and the level wasn’t used.
UI DESIGN
When developing the UI design I started by listing out all the different menus we would want in our game then all the elements that come under the different menus. Once I had this I then went and created UI layouts for the different menus and then created these templates within the game engine. When designing the UI for this game I found it hard to settle on a visual design due to the fantasy nature of the game. I wanted to incorporate elements of this into the UI but I struggled to come up with a visual aesthetic for it. Eventually after creating the game logo I settled on a visual design. The UI is designed with a rocky aesthetic to match with the environment of the hub world making use of blue as an accent colour as this is the colour of the portal that players return from when they arrive in the hub world. The blue is designed to look like a glow so when buttons are hovered and pressed by the player there is clear visual feedback. When finding the font for the game I looked for cartoon styled fonts that would lend towards the games visual aesthetic rather than take the player out of the games visuals. Another element of the UI design I had to work on were the character ability icons. When making these I used the brief of the ability effects as well as how they look in game to design the icons as good representations of the various character abilities. I also had to clean up images of the items, enemies and player characters for various buttons in the game.
LOGO DESIGN
When designing the logo for the game I wanted to create something that represented our game. With this I wanted to incorporate a symbol that represented the game but there wasn’t one. I decided instead to focus on designing a logo that just had the name and played around with various fonts for inspiration before I came across a stone looking one. From here I took the font and added further accents to the font to give it a more cartoon art style to fit with the game's visual aesthetic.
