Trials of Tartarus

Platform: windows PC

Team size: 4

Engine: Unity

Language: C#

Role(s): Team lead, lead designer, Programmer

OVERVIEW Play as an exorcist mercenary and take down the souls of the damned. Destroy and channel their souls into new weapons to take on stronger and smarter foes. Think fast and don't allow greed to consume you.

DISCUSSION For this project I acted as team leader, game designer and programmer. There were 3 other people involved 1 animator and character artist, and 2 environment and prop artists.

This project was decided on among the team so we could all improve in our relative skill sets, we felt that naturally if people were working on what they wanted to work on then they would have more drive to push themselves.

As a 4 man team with commitments to other modules, the project was certainly ambitious, we all knew this from the beginning and believed that even if we failed at least we would learn a lot doing it. And by the time our deadline came around we had a working playable (bit of a) game!

We wanted to create a hardcore experience for players of games such as dark souls, devil may cry and monster hunter games. Putting an emphasis on action based game-play which players would have to think and react quickly to a tough enemy with various attacks.

The key mechanic behind this game was the idea of soul lust. Each of the weapons in the game in terms of narrative, were intended to be an enemy soul that had been forged into a weapon wielded by the protagonist. However the soul those weapons were forged from were evil so this was reflected on a game-play level for the player. As they use the weapon a soul lust gauge would increase, once this was filled the player received a buff and a de-buff on their character, for example the katana weapon would receive attack up/ bleed damage on self. so this was the soul of the weapon activating its power but also having to draw from the protagonist to fuel it. You’ll see in the top right a number that increases as the player uses the weapon.

The player had 4 different weapons with different buffs and de-buffs. This was intended so that the player would have to formulate strategies against the enemy taking into account which weapons properties they needed at which point in the fight. so each weapon would give the player a different buff and de-buff. So the axe would provide the player with additional speed but also a decrease in defense, making them more evasive but at the same time if they do get hit they will take much more damage. a kind of risk reward element that goes along with every weapon.

And what added to this strategic thinking required from the player was the ability to embed those weapons into the enemy they were fighting, if those weapons were charged then the enemy would receive both the buff and de-buff effect.

This was to give the player a kind of management relationship with the enemy, if the enemy was too fast for the player to keep up with then they could charge a weapon with a speed down de-buff and then embed that into the enemy, the buff of that weapon really added an exchange with the enemy. The player had to think what aspect of the enemy he is having problems with the most at the moment, and then compare that with the available buff/de-buff his current weapons have and see if he can alter the enemy to something he would feel better dealing with.

so a thought the player may have is “he’s just too fast i can handle the extra damage this weapon will give him, as i’ll be able to dodge”.

When weapons were at full charge they could also channel that energy into a super move that the player had access to and that super move would scale depending on how many weapons the player had at full power and in their hand at that time. Upon using the super move their soul lust gauge would be reset and the buffs and de-buffs would be gone.

So this was intended to add to tension, obviously if the player has all 4 debuffs and buffs they could potentially be in a very vulnerable state, but they also have the chance to land a high damage attack.

However, smarter players will come to realize that they can minimize this tension by embedding weapons into the enemy, and calling them back only when they want to use their super attack. This way they don’t have to have 4 de-buffs on them at a time, but they still must take into account what weapon is least risky to embed in the enemy because of the buff.

In this prototype players have access to a high damage attack. In the final game we intended for players to be able to switch their super ability and also the weapon they currently held, allowing a layer of preparation for the players. So players would able to look at the abilities and stats of the enemy they are going to face and be able to adjust their load-out accordingly.

The moment to moment tension also came from how the basic combat worked. players could use the x button for a weak attack and the Y button for a power attack which was more used for building up the soul lust gauge. The combat was similar to how fighting games work. so each attack essentially had 3 phases. build up frames where contact with the weapon causes no damage, active frames where contact deals damage and recovery where the player could string another attack into a combo. Players are unable to dodge in the build up and active frames of the attack which puts them at risk of being hit. so power attacks are more valuable to the player, and there was an added risk to them due to the attacks being slower. generally all attacks had this kind of weighting. This adds to the tension and excitement of the game.

Players had to be conscious of using the attack at the right time. so monitoring the enemy attacks was key.

Which leads me to talk about the enemy design. The enemy had attack-able body parts scattered around his body which the player had to attack to deal damage. These all acted the same except for the heart of the boss, which was located at his front. The heart took double damage however it was covered by bone armour which only opened up when the enemy was using his flamethrower attack, which was also his most powerful attack. this was another little risk reward element to the fight. The player would have a small window where the attack was charging up, to get a few hits in on the enemy.

all of the attacks the enemy used were ensured to be clearly telegraphed, using his sounds and visual stimuli patterns to warn the player. This made the game fair and ensured that attacks wouldn’t just come out of nowhere.

The player also had a dodge ability which if he dodged at the moment of taking damage they would be able to negate any damage took and there was a nice time slow to make the player feel extra badass.

I also put a decent amount of time into making the game feel nice to play, such as hits that would shake the camera and stagger time slightly to emphasize the damage. just little things to make the game feel nice.

We had a lot of play-testing with the game, adjusting the difficulty to make the game slightly easier certainly happened, but only slightly. We wanted to maintain the challenging experience we initially intended. Any of the play testers of the game who were fans of our inspirational games were all really on board with the design of the game, they all understood it and had a good time.

Overall the team were happy with the game, we all got to work on the areas we desired and we were able to achieve something we felt was substantial giving our time frame, skill levels at the time and the fact we had multiple other modules for our university course.

FEEDBACK AND ALTERATIONS v0.1

Changes

Added additional weapons with additional buffs centered around the current enemy. Included a speed up buff as well as slight increase to players base speed due to audience demand.

Added a last second dodge chance. Many players were just missing the a dodge due to the quick nature of attacks, instead of removing that high tension added ability to dodge at the moment of receiving damage. This allows players that last second escape.

Enemy health increased.

Score rank milestones altered based upon repeated playtesting of various team members and playtesters.