Smog
Contributions
- Worked with a team of 8 to build a 20 minute Zelda-Dungeon inspired puzzle filled vertical slice built in 15 weeks in Unity.
- Designed a large explorative level filled with unique puzzles that take advantage of the player's 3 elemental abilities.
- Developed a diverse set of puzzles alongside other scripted events including enemy encounters using C# scripting.
Smog is a 3D third-person, action-adventure game where you explore a floating city and fight enemies in time-based combat.
Level Design
The world found within the game is massive, monster infested, and abandoned airship called the Mara. The main character, Alphonza, is a researcher that explores old and abandoned areas and on her travels she has discovered this legendary vessel. She has made it her goal to find the bridge of the ship and get it afloat again.
This whole level is primarily inspired by various dungeons across the Legend of Zelda series with the use of keys and linear exploration while making use of various items to solve puzzles and navigate. The other primary inspiration for this level is Resident Evil 2 Remake with the way enemy encounters were set up and overall tone and feel. The aim when creating this level was to place player's in a mysterious world that pulls them in wanting for more. This is done through the use of various unique environments, enemies, and puzzles constantly changing things up and keeping the game fresh throughout.
This whole level is primarily inspired by various dungeons across the Legend of Zelda series with the use of keys and linear exploration while making use of various items to solve puzzles and navigate. The other primary inspiration for this level is Resident Evil 2 Remake with the way enemy encounters were set up and overall tone and feel. The aim when creating this level was to place player's in a mysterious world that pulls them in wanting for more. This is done through the use of various unique environments, enemies, and puzzles constantly changing things up and keeping the game fresh throughout.
Cargo Bay/Navigation Room
The player begins on the exterior of the ship where upon moving towards the lit up garage door will be informed about shooting levers with their basic projectile ability. This will clue the player in that they need to shoot that big lever to open up the door inside.
After backtracking to the Cargo Hold, the player will gain the Flamethrower ability allowing them to burn down a rope containing the purple key. I designed the area so that when the player exits the navigation room they will see the rope clear as day so they know to go back to it after getting the flame ability.
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The player will continue through the cargo hold until they run into the locked purple door which is followed by a prompt that will encourage the player to always keep an out on their surroundings when exploring.
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Mess Hall/Kitchen
These next few areas facilitate a bit more exploration and combat primarily with the player traveling through the kitchen and freezer in search of the blue key until suddenly a brand new monster hops out of a drawer alongside the key.
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After obtaining the key and heading back into the kitchen, the player will be greeted with their first battle against multiple enemies before allowed access to the Power Room.
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Power Room
The player will enter this room consisting or multi-colored lifts and associated multi-colored levers. The player will need to make use of their projectile to activate the switches to proceed. However when one lift is active, the other two will deactivate forcing the player to think creatively about how to navigate the room, especially when backtracking through it.
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Getting as far as the player can go right now, the player will find themselves in the Control room where they will need to defeat their first electric cat enemy. Upon doing so they are granted an electric upgrade to their projectile ability allowing them to power certain switches. However due to the battle with the cat, the way door back into the main room has short circuited so the player will need to make use of their new ability to power the door again.
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After getting back into the main power room, the player can now power the red lift but can only access the platform itself from middle platform but they can't reach it from there as there's a bunch of boxes in the way. So the player will have to find the way to move the obstruction using the lifts they can activate and their flame ability and then will be able to gain access to the red lift.
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Engine Room
This is the biggest area in the game and it aims to test out all of the player's skills they've acquired so far including their platforming dexterity as they travel across massive cogs to freshen up exploration a bit and also teach player's about how the big vertical cog can help lift them up to a higher area.
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After traveling through the first set of cogs, the player will find another set that isn't functioning right now (starting with another massive vertical cog), so this will give them the idea they need to find a way to turn them on to progress. They will also see a massive air vent in the distance which is the main goal of this room.
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Vent/Bridge
Development and Iteration of the Map
A big theme of this game's development was the constant need to scope down throughout development. The initial plan for the game was to create a massive ship with like 20 unique rooms filled with puzzles. But shortly after the initial map was drawn we as a team realized just how massively over scoped the whole thing was so we cut it in half and built from there up till we finished the beta map. While the entire vision of the game was finished at this point, it wasn't all polished including some mechanics, so we made more cuts and honed in more on the best parts of the game to ensure our final product was polished.
Cut Content
Throughout Development, we had to cut a lot of different rooms for one reason or another (which is why these rooms look so incomplete compared to the rest of the game). This includes a massive water works area where the player would need to thaw various ice blocks to flood the room to progress, we just simply ran out of time to fully polish this area so it was decided we should cut it. Another major area that was cut was a big storage area that sat in front of the bridge of the ship. This area consisted of a box puzzle where the player needed to move boxes around so they could successfully climb into a nearby vent. After watching playtests, the team decided to cut the box pushing mechanic entirely because it was not very fun and very slow so instead of trying to polish it we just cut it to focus on the more fun parts of our game. The last major area we cut down was the massive vent network which was around 25% of the total playtime of the game. We cut this out because keeping the player out of the nice looking environments and being trapped in an ugly air vent made everything get mundane so we just cut it down significantly.