Team & Roles
Vision Owner, Lead Game Designer and Level Designer in a team of 10, with 3 other designers, 4 artists and 2 gameplay programmers.
Software and tools
Unreal Engine 5, Blueprints, Github, Fork, Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides), Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, XD)
Context
Final year project in Supinfogame Rubika
Duration
13 months, full-time
My work
As a vision owner :
- Define the core experience of the game
- Share the vision with the whole team and ensuring everyone goes toward a common goal
- Frequently pitch the game to teachers and jury members
As a lead game designer and level designer :
- Manage a team of 4 designers, ensuring tasks are correctly distributed and everyone handles its own feature
- Design and document core features, including level generation, inventory, loot and player controller
- Work closely with artists and programmers to ensure features are correctly understood and implemented by the team
- Create a prototype of the different menus and interfaces
- Design and iterate on various levels and collaborate with level artists to bring our common vision to life
About the game
The Dawnfinders is a cooperative extraction dungeon crawler, for up to 4 players online. You play as explorers in the late XIXe century, trying to survive through dangerous expeditions into an ancient egyptian tomb. Your goal : Reach the deepest sanctuary of the tomb while avoiding the reincarnated cult members and the traps on your way, steal a powerful artifact and flee with it before the tomb collapses.
Genre : Extraction Dungeon Crawler
Players : Up to 4 players, cooperative, online
Camera : Top down, centered on your avatar
Character : A member of the Dawnfinders, able to move, attack and interact with its environment
Controller and support : PC, either with a controller or with a mouse and a keyboard
Target : Midcore to hardcore gamers ; experienced and mature audience
Managing a team
My first and probably most important role on this project is to manage a large team of 10 people. This includes :
- Making sure the whole team has the same vision of the game.
- Handling regular stand-up meetings.
- Keeping tracks of the deadlines and working on milestone deliverables (pitch deck, planning, etc).
- Working tightly with artists and programmers to ensure everyone goes toward the same common goal.
- Identifying early enough major problematics in the team, mostly by having monthy individual meetings with each member.
Some challenges I have to face :
- Keeping the whole team motivated and focus on the same goal on a longest period of time than everything we've made before.
- Finding solutions to both project and human problematics before it gets too deep to be easily solvable.
- Finding ways to connect poles that could sometimes stay isolated.
Designing and documenting
As a member of the Design team, I'm also tasked to :
- Design and document core features, such as Player Controller, Inventory, Loot, Level Generation, and Player Progression
- Make sure that this documentation is easily readable for both artists and programmers
- Prototype new core mechanics and systems, such as Firearms, Stealth, Fog of War or Dynamic post processes
- Prototype menus, using Adobe XD and Figma
Some challenges I have to face :
- Balancing permaloss of the inventory upon death and frustration to keep the player's interest.
- Maximizing replayability through progression systems, giving the player a sense of achievement after each game.
- Adapt Blueprints to a multiplayer architecture mostly programmed in C++.
- Dealing with a way bigger scope than our previous projects, without falling into the overscope.
Creating and iterating on levels
Finally, I'm in charge of creating the levels for the players to explore, which includes :
- Defining the metrics and the global level design intentions.
- Defining the procedural generations rules and document it for the programmers.
- Designing levels with various ambiances and playstyles.
- Creating a feeling of exploration and add replayability to each level.
- Working closely with the level artists to design believable environment.
Some challenges I have to face :
- Finding the tool that fits the best my workflow to fill my creativity. After long researches, I've opted for Dungeon Scrawl.
- Including a lot of different gameplay elements (verticality, camp points, traps, enemy spawners, ziplines spots, and more) to restricted areas.
- Making each level unique despite the "dungeon" aspect of it.
The Team
GAME DESIGN
Yazid DJAOUI - System Design
Syprien SEMERIA - 3C Design
GAME ART
Claire COSTE - Characters, Animations
Daniel DE ALMEIDA - Environment, Textures
Samuel SELAMI - Characters
Damien SIPPEL - Art Director, Environment, Lighting
GAME PROGRAMMING
Alexis DUPIRE - Gameplay, Network
Arthur PERIGNON - Gameplay