Titan of the Sands
10 members*
4 weeks
Unreal
Concept
Titan of the Sands is a third person, boss fighting game. The main protagonist, equipped with only a crossbow, is tasked by the King of the Land to deal with a dangerous threat: the Titan of the Sands.
The boss fight is established more as a puzzle battle, therefore trying to damage the boss directly will have very little impact. The player must figure out how to expose the boss's weakpoints and strike when the time is right!
Titan of the Sands is a vertical slice and had many more ambitious plans before downscoping due to members leaving the team. There are design plans for additional bosses, mechanics, and puzzles.
Contribution
Product Owner*
Led the team to complete production on the game, dealt with major setbacks, and kept the game's scope within reason
Scrum Master*
Organized meetings and faciliated communication between team members, allocated tasks to members, and established scrum
Game Design
Lead designer, established and implemented core systems and game loop design, mechanics design, narrative design
Animation & VFX
Fully animated the boss and created most of the VFX in the game
*Our team had several members dropping out within the first two weeks, including the original product owner and scrum master. Although it is not best practice, I absorbed both positions and tried my best to fulfill the responsibilities of these positions in addition to my own tasks. The team was reduced to only a few members for the majority of the development time.
Design Pillars
After deciding that we wanted to take on the art of creating a boss fight, Titan of the Sands was designed around these major aspects.
Puzzle Battle
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Instead of allowing the player to keep damaging the boss as quickly as possible, we decided to only allow the boss to be damaged at specific moments when exposing it's weakpoint.
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This allowed us to control the pacing of the fight and craft an experience that is more engaging than the player just trying to kill it as fast as possible.
Simple Combat
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We decided to go with a simple combat mechanic as it wasn't the main focus of the game.
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The player has access to a projectile to hit the weakpoints, and is able to dodge roll in any direction to avoid the titan's attacks.
Battle Progression
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It was important that the boss fight progresses through different phases and attacks as the battle goes on.
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This was decided to ensure that the player feels like they are making progress during the fight and have to learn how to deal with new challenges at every step of the way.
Product Ownership (and Scrum Master?!)
Halfway through the project, our product owner had to leave the team. The day after, our scrum master also had to leave. No other members wanted to take these responsibilities, so I stepped in and took them both. I understand that the product owner and scrum master should not be the same person, but the problem needed to be solved and I tried my best to balance the responsibilities of each role on top of my own tasks. It was a lot of work, but we ended up with a (down-scoped) finished product that I am satisfied with.
Filling the Backlog
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We worked in Jira to assign tasks and keep track of what needed to be done for each sprint. I set a goal for what I wanted at the end of each sprint, discussed with the team members if this would be possible, and filled the backlog with the tasks necessary to reach this goal.
Assigning Tasks and Facilitating Communication
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I worked with each member of the team to figure out which tasks they could do and what obstacles were blocking them.
- As many of the tasks were reliant on other members, I kept a constant communication with those who were on these tasks to make sure everything was clear to all parties and development was moving forward.
Taking on New Responsibilities
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These new responsibilities were abruptly put onto my shoulder, so it took me a moment to reestablish the scope of the game and figure out the capabilities of the remaining team members.
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The game was down-scoped significantly at first, and then needed to be down-scoped further as other members had to leave the team. I am satisfied with the way I handled this severe change in the game and I feel like I have learned a lot from this experience.
Animation & VFX
I took on the enormous task of fully animating the boss for this project. This is one of the first times I have ever animated anything, but I am extremely pleased with the result. I had to learn a new program and experiment during the first week of the project, but by the end, I was comfortable with the basics and the style of animation I aimed for.
I also created most of the VFX required for the game, but I kept it minimal as my time was spread very thin.
Learning and Experimenting
I created all my animations using Cascadeur, which I spent a week learning and experimenting with. As the boss is an enormous stone titan, I had to figure out how to make it move in a realistic way. I spent time making every movement feel massive and weighty.
Animation Showreel
Below is a showreel of several of the animations I made in Cascadeur. The final versions may be tweaked or improved.
Game Design
As the lead designer from the start, I tried to establish a simple baseline gameplay that we could easily expand upon if we had the time and resources. Luckily, this turned out to be a great way to start the project as we were only able to accomplish this baseline gameplay given our setbacks.
These two simple game loops provided the context for the game itself, and the actual boss fights that were meant to be the main focus of the game. Although we only ended up with a single boss, we still stuck to these loops successfully.
I created this diagram as a guide for how the boss should function during one of it's phases. This was very helpful for the programmers, designers, and myself to all align towards a clear goal. It was useful to separate what the boss actions were and how the player would respond to those actions, as it also gave more perspective on how the player would feel during each phase. The goal of game development is to create a fun experience after all!
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© 2023 by Seth Marrison. All Rights Reserved.