Dogma : Child of the Fallen
Capstone Game | 5 people | 8 months
Overview :
This was my capstone game for my Bachelor of Game Design degree at Sheridan College. We made a metroidvania-style game.
Responsibilities :
Game Design : My ability to program paired with understanding of design led to me being able to easily transfer designs from the whole team into prototypes to speed up the prototype, playtest, iterate cycle.
Programming : I was the sole programmer. I wrote my own physics system for the player controller. Unlike with built-in Unity physics, after implementing this physics system I didn’t see any collision issues. I used behavior trees for the enemy AI.
Sound Design : I used Wwise for the audio implementation (sound design asset list below).
Project Management : It was a longer project so I was able to experiment with both Waterfall and Agile production methodology. We ended up finding much more success with an Agile approach, right until the end of the project when we began to also include the roadmapping tools in Jira to make sure we would be finished by our deadline.
Variable Jump Height
Wall Jump
Combat
Dash
Moving Platforms
Double Jump
Sound Design Asset List
We kept a living Game Design Document over the course of the project to maintain cohesive vision and share progress and current goals with our professors and industry guests.
Example of applying landmark design principles to playtesting results
There is an ability locked area near the beginning of the game. There is a ledge you cannot get to until you progress, get the dash ability, and return (very metroidvania).
In our prototypes, we found during testing that players weren’t remembering about that specific ledge in the late game and were getting frusturated. I added a cutscene using the Unity timeline that plays when the character reaches the ledge which introduces them to the boss for the first time there.
Ledge location cutscene
This left a lot more players with a firmer memory of the location, and we saw a large rise in the number of players who would immediately return after getting the dash ability in the fire zone.
The team enjoyed the idea of having (Barren -> Watering -> Grown) as our Trello progress tracking tags.