Léon
2020
Rhythm Adventure game | 5 months
Intentions :
Rhythm focus gameplay - Surprising
Pitch :
Imagine a world where all the joy comes from music, all that lives comes from music. But you are the only remaining who can play music. Play as Léon, a chameleon clarinetist, to bring back the music in a fantastic world full of wonders.
My roles
Project Manager
Game Designer
Programmer
Unity - GitKraken - Trello
Context
It was the second video game project of my second Game design year. We were 8 working on this, with 4 Game artists and 4 Game designers and I was in charge of managing the team.
The goal for this project was to follow the rules of a classic adventure game like the first Zelda games. So the game had to have a world to explore, enemies to confront, puzzles to solve and a dungeon with a boss to defeat. But even with all those rules, we wanted to do something different and we decided to make a game about music.
Development
From the first brainstorming we did to find the theme of our game, we realised each member of the team had a strong connection with music. Some listened a lot to music or others played an instrument, like me. The theme was decided, the entire game would be about music. And we started searching about a world centred around the importance of music.
Inevitably, the gameplay needed to be designed with music. So we decided to blend a rhythm game with an adventure game.
The idea was to do the action of the game on the beats of the music. We took inspiration from Crypt of necrodancer but we wanted the player to have more freedom in his movement. So we had the idea that the player would move very quickly through dash-like moves by clicking where he wanted to go. We called this move a “Blink”. We realised that we needed to limit the positions the character could blink to because the commitment for moving was too big with the beat limitation. So we decided to put anchors manually placed where the character would blink on to help the player navigate the world.
With this movement mechanic, we faced a problem: the camera. Since the player would point the anchors to move all the time, the camera needed to be as static as possible. In contrast with my previous project Yokai no Shoten, we decided that the best camera we needed was a static camera with no movement at all. With this, we created a world separated in screens like the first Zelda game. To move across the world the player would need to get through many screens, so we had to make a satisfying transition with character animation and a screen transition.
Even if we were doing a rhythm game we wanted to have a world that the player would want to explore. So with the artist of the team, we created an original universe with mysterious elements, characters and logic to encourage the player to explore and learn more about the world. The world has 4 different regions with different theme and meaning for the world. We added optional dialogue that the character can have with his companion throughout the world to give the player more information if he is curious.
During development, we realised that the player mainly needed to use 1 input: Left click. So we took the challenge to do a one-button game to reduce the memorisation needed to learn to play the game.
My work
As the project manager, I was in charge of organising the work, making plannings and managing meetings. At the time, I had little experience in Management, so I learned a lot and this experience surely made me more confident about my capacity to manage a team. This project was a challenge, first because of the unusual experience we chose to create, and second because of the context in which it was developed. Because of the pandemic, the second half of the project unfolded during confinement. So I had to manage both with direct contact with the members and then only by online meetings. I had to adapt to the new situations the members were working in. I knew that neglecting the mental health of any team member would only lead to project failure. So I tried to understand the difficulties some members were facing to correctly adapt their workload and redistribute to other members if they could. As usual, the initial scope of the game was too big, and even more with the pandemic so I had to anticipate those issues to find solutions with the team to re-scope some aspect of the game. I used the agile methodology, working by sprint of one week where every member has their tasks listed and detailed on a Trello dashboard.
In terms of game design, it was something quite new. It was my first game based on rhythm, and as expected, it brought many new problems that I had never solved. So I learned how to help the player to play on the beat, with feedback and learning curves.
While designing the tutorial for the game, I understood the importance of letting the player test and experience the game at his own pace while also helping him at key moments.
Overall, I improved my knowledge with 3Cs design.
I also did some level design for combat areas and puzzles. I always had pleasure when making levels. It is even more satisfying when it proves the interest of level elements designed earlier.
This project was the first project where I had to collaborate on programming since I did it alone on a previous project. We were 2 in charge of programming the whole game. I learned how to structure a game with many aspects. My experience with my previous project Yokai helped me to make tools to help the balancing of the game, mostly for the rhythm aspect.
I learned to prepare playtest with this game. We needed to test our movement mechanic really soon in order to see where the players were struggling the most. We took a lot of feedback on various aspects of the game. I learned to wisely choose the ones that were relevant to improve the game while always keeping our intentions.
Conclusion
Overall this project helped me broaden my knowledge of 3C design. I also developed my skills in level design and narrative while improving my methodology in programming for more efficiency. This is the project I’m the proudest of, because of his originality and his ambitions.
