Dungeon Survivor
2 weeks prototype
GENRE
2D, singleplayer, dungeon, adventure, puzzle
Team (3 people)
Daoyuan Shen, Ruizhe Tang, Wenbo Wu
GAME ENGINE
Unity
MY RESPONSIBILITIES
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Original design idea
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Designed level
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Designed game system
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QA tester
How to design the game
For the design part, we made strong designs for Memorizing and Inventories. The player should remember the map. Because the torch limits the player to keep exploring the map. When the player does not have the torch, the player cannot pick up anything and the visual field will be small. The player’s steps can reduce the torch. In the original design, we want to limit the player movement, and we wish the player can explore the map repeatedly to make memorizing. On the other way, we put the tip paper near the river to tell the player how to build the tools, which is the memorizing for the player. Because the player should remember the pattern to build the tools. The workbench is far from the river. Our level design is complicated because we want to make a maze. But we added the direction to guide the player. The player will know where is the gas which can recover the torch. That will help the player to avoid losing direction.
For inventories, we made a backpack system and a crafting system. The player can drop and pick up stuff from the bag. And the player can combine the stuff to make a tool on the workbench. We added some interesting interactions for the crafting system. The player should change the direction of the things to complete the correct composition.
The inventories part, we made some secret rooms, we used the gate to lock the area. In every area, there is a treasure box, which has some resources inside. The player has to use the key to open it. But the key needs to consume the resources. So, the player should make a decision to open the door or not. It cannot guarantee the treasure box is profitable because of the key.
Challenge
In the case of the short of the time, we didn’t make too many different textures for our map. Thus there are hardly remarkable places that can remind the player of the way, and the player may feel dizzy after trying hard to confirm if he has been to the same place.
We also lack some random “emergency” in our game. There’re no traps or enemies in the game, which makes the game pretty “static” and sometimes may make the player feel bored since things hardly changed and they have to repeat some movement (though the puzzles are changing and require the player remember it down).
Since we have to edit the map by ourselves, it’s kind of tricky when I realize it’s hard to arrange the resources in the map and control the torch refill point. It requires a forecast of the player’s movement and calculates how many steps will he take between the items and the refill point, we tried and edited it several times but still not satisfied since the player may run out of the torch and get lost in the maze.