Approach:
-Use the affordances of current mechanics, shooting and foraging, as bounds for the behavior of the new items to limit complexity.
-Make the items easy to acquire, and their use cases close to the established play patterns
-Keep the crafting mechanics minimal
Dealt In Darkness
Genre: Horror Comedy/Party
Type: Active Development
Engine: Unity
Tools: Unity, Blender, Confluence, Trello
Role: Gameplay Designer
Team Size: 7
Game Overview
Dealt in Darkness is a casual multiplayer horror game where players compete in series of board and card games with the goal of winning the most carnival tickets.
Players receive tickets by placing highly in minigames. These tickets are what buy the players freedom at the end of the game. Tickets have an alternative use, buying prizes. Prizes are items that can be used through out the game to either help yourself or hinder your opponents. Prizes do not count towards the number of tickets a player has and do not contribute to winning at the end of the game.
As players progress throughout the game they slowly gain tickets. Between games players may spend their tickets to buy “Prizes”.
Design Contributions
Replace with older gameplay footage
Problem:
The gameplay for flashfire revolves around deducing where on the game board you enemies are hiding. Playtesting showed that the gameplay quickly became stale and was not engaging enough.
The root of the problem comes from players not having tools to actively figure out where enemy players are and are forced to wait for an opponent to make a mistake. This created multiple turns where players felt a sense of low agency
Goal:
Create a small set of items for the player to use during the game of flashfire that supplement the use of their primary fire.
The primary function of these items should be giving the user additional information about enemy players locations.
Result:
-Added 2 additional resources for players to harvest during their turn.
-Added 3 items for players to craft using, each requiring unique combination of resource
Introducing more actions added more strategy to the gameplay as well as layer of tension in decision making. I worked to fine tune this balance, having items feel easy to acquire and impactful, but not overlaping the main focus of the game. Keep your fire alive and shoot enemy hunters.
Before the implementation of items Flashfire had players taking one of each available action on their turns Moving, Collecting Wood, Firing Weapons. Executing actions this way worked well for the structure of the game but was unsatisfying and limiting. This alongside a fresh set of mechanics ready to be introduced (Items) was cause for a redesign of how players took actions in flashfire.
Add footage of older boring gameplay →move, shoot, pass
Add footage of older gameplay SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT
Cause:
It was important that once a player committed to shooting that they not be allowed to move afterwards. This is because when a player shoots their location is signaled to all other players, letting players move after this signal would render all information given obsolete. This lead to repetitive play patterns.
This alongside the addition of items forces a change to how players execute turns
Initial implementation of solution:
Give players a bank of “Action points” and cost each action at 1 point. Let players take actions in an combination they choose
This worked but caused unhealtny gameplay triple shoot & do nothing correct direction but to few limits. we need to encourage players to finish the game.
Post Iteration:
Punish players for staying outside of campfire with changes in flash behavior & add guaranteed shot at the end of each turn outside of action points.
This worked but caused unhealtny gameplay triple shoot & do nothing correct direction but to few limits. we need to encourage players to finish the game.
Update image to add items
Snare
Trap an area on an opponents board.
When they exit the players are notified and the snared tiles are consumed
Decoy
Place a Decoy on your board.
The next time you are revealed the decoy’s location is shown instead
Arrow
Shoot an arrow at an opponents board.
The arrow reveals if the hunter is within its proximity
Refine Action Economy
Item #1 Snare: Feather + Flax
Choose a tile on another player's board. That tile becomes "snared" for the rest of the
game. The first time a player would move onto that space (not through) they cannot take
the movement action next turn. A unique ‘snare’ sound is triggered for all players.
Item #2 Decoy: Wood + Flax
Choose a tile within your Campfire’s radius. During your next turn, any action
that/reveal that would make a player visible, is instead mapped to the Decoy’s location.
At the end of this turn, the Decoy’s location is revealed to all players and it’s tile is
greyed out.
Item #3 Arrow: Wood + Feather
Choose a tile on another player’s board. The Arrow is fired upon that tile in the same way as the regular rifle. It reports back to the firing Hunter with three response variations
(Which appear at the top of the player’s screen, beneath ‘Your Turn’) depending on their
enemy’s current relative position to where the Arrow landed.
Wide Miss: The enemy Hunter is within 3 tiles of where the Arrow struck
Near Miss: The enemy Hunter is within 1 tile of where the Arrow struck
Nowhere Close: The enemy Hunter is beyond 3 tiles of where the Arrow
struck
Arrows do not affect Campfires and cannot remove a life from a Hunter on direct
contact. Direct contact results in a Near Miss response.
Flashfire
My Contributions:
Design and Iterate Items/Crafting System
Refine Action Economy
Designed Items and Crafting System to improve gameplay uptime
Gumbo
My Contributions:
Iterate core gameplay rules
Re-work scoring & Win conditions
The Blink Curse
Role: Combat Designer
The Blink Curse is an experimental top-down bullet hell where you play as the cursed researcher Kallia. Explore decrepit dungeons and avoid dangerous enemies all while trying to find a cure to the blink curse.
Synthesis
My Roles: Gameplay designer + Narrative designer/ writer
Synthesis is a top-down dungeon crawler about a shut-in conspiracy theorist named Calvin. Throughout the game the player finds powerful experimental mutagens with strong combat effects. These temporary upgrades come with a boost in power but also side effect that change control the players controls.
