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Role:
Game designer
Worked on Controls,
Camera,
and overall Design vision.
Team:
Programmers: Valentin Legeay Suliac Blineau Jordan Bas
Ergonomics: Gaston Robert
Art Meghan Martin Lise Sourlier
Management: Victor Cottineau
Game Design: Malo Dalmier Thomas Rodriguez Val Isautier
Sound Designer: Marc Enciso
Voice Actor: Jacob Barrens
Peak was my last-year game project in ENJMIN,
It's a gliding game that is also a boss-fighting game.
We wanted to make something cool and juicy like the SSX games, with a clear objective to force the player's actions.
If the player wants to defeat the boss, they have to go as quick as the beast they see toward them, and to do impressive tricks to make damages to it. Each boss will make the players adapt and play ina new style.
Two controllers, 4+ cameras:
In addition to the vision brainstorm with the other designer, I was mainly in charge of the 3C for this game.
It was an intense challenge, as we were working on a complex 3rd person game, with 2 objects of interest (player and beast) and a high character speed.
The controller were mostly lot of communication work with the programmer, and lot of ballancing to get the right feels. After a lot of test, we opted for a system that will mostly take into account the angle of the ground to determine the speed: the player can't stop moving on a slope, sometime a slope will make them turn on the side and they'll have to compensate with the controller.
It gives a nice feeling of gliding and connection to the ground. It's also a good tool for our level design process, as a big slope will mean a high speed and difficulty.
I decided not to give a traditional control of the camera by the player, as we needed the player not to turn around and climb the montain (but still allowed to tweak the orientation a bit so it wouldn't be frustrating).
Instead we had a system that would change the camera on wether the player was on ground, jumping, falling, attacking, etc, and tried to guess the player's intent to focus on what they want to do next. (focus on the boss when attacking, but still let them know where they will land and how far they are from the ground)
The player can trigger special camera-lock mode to better see the boss (and won't see the slope) if they feel lost.
Write a character that helps gameplay:
I also wrote a character's lines, that appears in the game as a DJ, who brings music to the game. Between the songs, he'll eventually give the players hints about the lore, or advices to hit the beast.
That way I was able to give narrative reasons for why our players need to take the collectibles on their way, or even why they want to beat the boss, without an anoying text, or unecesary cinematic.
Thoses lines were basically great in-game reminder of the game's lore and player's goals. Here are examples from the game:
DJ Typhoon - Catch up with the thing.mp3Artist Name
00:00 / 00:16
DJ Typhoon - How to get christals .mp3Artist Name
00:00 / 00:41
Boss Fighting - Level Design & Ballancing.
The Beast follows a spline on the whole level, and will always be ahead of the player. I was in charge of making sure the player will be able to get close enough to hit the boss, without actually going faster than the beast.
We had a door system along the spline. Thanks to that, we would know where the player is compared to the boss. Depending on this distance, the boss' speed changes, with the speed being the same as the player's speed when the beast is getting closer.
Doors were generated automatically, but adjusted manually. The door were a good way to create unique situation and hitting opportunity, because by tweaking them, we could make the beast slow down, thinking the player is a bit late, while it's not true. We would sometime lie to our own system to create unique and spectacular situations.
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