“Run and Gun” – A Parkour FPS Project:

4th year, MComp Project Artefact (2021)

Inspirations include: [Mirror’s Edge], [Dying Light], [Doom], [Dishonoured], [Titanfall], [Cyberpunk 2077], [Prince of Persia: Sands of Time] and [John Wick Films]. (Later also [Ghost Runner])

This project is a First Person Shooter with Parkour elements, taking heavy inspirations from the games above, the concept for the game is that you are a sci-fi machine created for the purpose of quick and efficient assassinations, this game demo takes you through the Tutorial (00:00-02:25), Level 1 (02:25-04:30) and an Arena(04:30-End), all of which are themed as Simulation Training, with the image of your character dashing through the city streets / Rooftops, shooting and dicing all resistance until you reach the end in a smooth and stylish manner without ever being hindered.

The gameplay contains simple, but fluid movement, with a slide, ledge climb and wall run, during which you can shoot, reload and use melee attacks with your dagger. Created for a Research Question of [How best to guide the player during fast paced sequences]. Where I used Coloured Paths (Runner Vision), Enemy Placements, Smoke Signals and Lighting in order to guide the player to the end, as well as using Landmarks, Framing and Layout (Starting at the port, ocean at your back, you can only move forward). It’s important to note this is a follow up to an artefact I did the previous year, [Love and Doom] which features similar mechanics.

How the Ledge Climb works on any platform with space and it’s rapidity is inspired from [Doom] + [Dying Light], it’s sleek and seamless wall-running is inspired from [TitanFall], a gun and dagger first person versatility is from [Dishonoured], the spinning gun reload animation is from [Cyberpunk 2077] as a peek at the style of the game, and the Flow of consecutive enemies, taking extra care with the gun’s magazine count and spacing of enemies so you can stay moving at full speed and still have time to shoot is inspired from [John Wick Films], and finally, how the player is guided through a level is inspired by [Mirror’s Edge]. Of course, there are also general similarities to [Ghost Runner], particularly enemy design and I used it as a reference near the end of development, inspiring Shielded Enemies and Bullet Reflection.

Play the game for yourself here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oaeZbvLb5hawKYZlDI_xps1IuFW7Dv7C/view?usp=sharing

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“Placeholder” – A Isometric Town Defense Project:

4th year, Advanced Game Prototyping Artefact (2021)

Inspirations include: [Rune Factory], [Harvest Moon], [Stardew Valley], [Minecraft], [Fortnite], [Left 4 Dead 2] and [Legend of Zelda]

A group project developed with diversifiers in mind: Keep it simple (D-pad + 2 Buttons only), Night and Day (A twin mode mechanic) and Unbranching (Multiple Starts, One ending). The concept was of a player arriving at a desolate and ruined village that had been attacked by zombies, the goal is to build the village back up by gathering resources in the wild, Wood, Stone, Herbs and Metal, which are used for Construction, Healing and Upgrades in order to defend the town at nighttime from spawning zombies. Each night it gets harder and harder as more zombies and more varieties arrive until the 7th night, where the zombie leader appears for a final confrontation, zombie army in tow. The project had a Game Loop of gathering materials, upgrading and building defences, then fighting zombies until sunrise and repeat. Until the final night.

Intro Video (00:00 – 01:50). Sword Gameplay (01:50 – 05:00). Spear Gameplay (05:00 – 07:00). Bow Gameplay (07:00 – 08:50). Axe Gameplay (08:50 – 11:35). Boss (11:35 – End)

It was a 4 person group project, I had developed all the Animations (downloading the models online which were ripped from Pokemon), Implemented the Player’s Combat System (All weapons), the Enemies blueprints, AI, Sound, Music, Particles (mostly edited from starter content) and the Balancing of the gameplay.

For the project, I had created 4 Weapons, (Sword, Spear, Bow and Axe), carefully finetuning their Attack Speeds, Damage and Upgrade Rates against the Zombies which had 4 types (Normal (Female + Male), Hunter, Spitter and Boss) It was the first time I had to test and dedicate so much time in carefully balancing every aspect that fed into the core combat. All attacks by the player are usually one note with the same motion each time, similar to old school zelda games or Rune Factory, which has a nice simplicity in how their combat works. Zombies were designed to Challenge the player and to make Upgrades Noticeable, the constant Advance of Time causes the player to be pressed for resources when the zombies come at night, aiming to destroy Town Hall.

Play the game for yourself here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LjsiPZTX8ilvw8BZHKJs5E9IkkPVsfUW/view?usp=sharing

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“Love and Doom” – A Visual Novel, FPS fusion Project:

3rd year, Advanced Game Mechanics Artefact (2020)

Inspirations include: [Doki Doki Literature Club], [Baldur’s Sky], [Doom], [TitanFall], [Apex Legends], [Devil May Cry] [Sorcerer] and [Walking Dead by Telltale]

For the module, we had to combine two genres’ mechanics into a single project, and I chose the Visual Novel and FPS, taking inspirations from Visual Novel’s Ui and Storytelling alogn with FPS’ frenetic action, I quickly discovered that the two went well together, as a narrative and gameplay mechanic each. The story is a bit dramatic but depicts the story of an average student having a fateful encounter that evoles into fast paced combat on rooftops and sneaking through buildings of guards before facing the big bad at the very end in a climatic duel. I played with the troupes and leaned into them, and through the story’s narrative beats, was able to create several levels with a variety of simple and intuitive mechanics that change over the course of the game before you can get bored of them.

Level 4 (00:00 – 01:20) – Chase Sequence, the player gains a speedboost and has to chase down a care through the busy streets of the city, taking shortcuts, with introduction of simple parkour such as Sliding and Ledge Grabbing, whilst avoiding being shot and other cars on the road.

Level 5 (01:20 – 02:45) – Rooftop Sequence, the player now has fully unlocked their mobility mechanics, including Double Jump and Dash, allowing them to leap over huge gaps between rooftops, as they try to escape from their pursuers, gunning down enemies with a shotgun and avoiding minigun fire from a Helicopter sweeping through the level, forcing you to keep moving and fighting.

Level 10, 11 (02:45 – 06:30) – Stealth and Melee Combat introduction, in this part of the story, the player has been captured and special abilities deactivated, leaving them vulnerable with only a dagger, thus stealth becomes prevalent, with extra mechanics such as attacks during Slides or Jumps do extra damage, which keeps a sense of flow and weight to the attacks. In Level 11, the player encounters a Knight enemy which wields a sword that has tells and swings that can be countered by the Dagger’s attack, this trains the player for the final boss.

Level 13 (06:30 – END) – Final Boss, reaching the climax of the story, it’s a 1 on 1 fight against the antagonist, the Knights trained you to read the sparks telling you of the incoming attack, along with the positioning of the sword which the boss tests rigorously. The Boss has excellent push and pulls thanks to a variety of attacks and a constant jump before and during every single attack, each with distinct tells. As their HP drops, their attacks and movement becomes faster, allowing the fight to crescendo. Inspired by ideas of an enemy that is equally matched with the player, like in [Devil May Cry]

Play the game for yourself here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18S-illANioqkgnN3OcKbQcSHxs1Gt_pI/view?usp=sharing

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“Stealth Project”

Summer side project (2020)

A simple project I had created during summer holidays in order to polish up my skills with certain mechanics, in this case, the main focus was Stealth with the addition of Counter Attacking as a method of combating enemies. The Concept was of a normal person who was abducted and experimented on to become a cyborg assassin, however, the player wakes up and tries to break out at first without weapons, they would avoid guards in a weakened state, then they would gradually find a Sword, Shurikens and other abilities that create more options for them down the line, whilst measuring how violent or non-violent they were.

The Project contains logic for Light Intensity and whether you were crouched or not, being a factor of how quickly Enemy’s Awareness of you would increase, it was an experiment to make it possible to actually hide in shadows from enemies. The enemies would be able to Alert each other when catching a glimpse of the player or when discovering a dead body. And probably the main fun I had in this project, was that the player is able to execute cool counter attacks to defeat their opponent, it was fun to animate the player’s attacks in conjunction with using Mixamo animations for the guards to lessen my workload. It was just a small prototype with no real meaning behind it but to test my skills, learn more about the engine and understand the process in developing stealth games.

Level 1 (00:00 – 01:40) – The first level featured the escape sequence, where the player would learn to stick to shadows and avoid enemy attention
Level 2 (0:1:40 – 04:00) – This level featured a much larger area, along with Cameras that pan left and right, locking on and using the Noise event to attract guard’s attentions, as well as teaching the player about Keys which were required for certain coloured doors to open.
Level 3 (04:00 – END) – This level would introduce Shurikens and Interactables, showcasing how Shurikens can disable cameras, and showing Electricity traps that are tied to power boxes that can be destroyed to be deactivated, the Shuriken is a limited resource that can also kill enemies from a distance.