VALHALLA SHOWDOWN
Platform:
PC
Game Engine:
Unity
Duration:
7+ months
Team Size:
6
Role:
Game Designer, Level Designer, Programmer
Description:
Valhalla Showdown is a local multiplayer beat ‘em up party video game where a maximum of four players can engage in a free-for-all combat as Vikings representing their Norse Gods (Odin, Loki, Thor and Freya). Players start out with their basic skills such as dropkicks and punches to deal damage and score kills. A dropkick can be used to knock players backwards into environment hazards and a series of punches can stun players leaving them wide open for a strong dropkick. As the game progresses players can choose to pick up weapons and power ups that spawn on the map to gain an advantage and help them score kills easily. The objective of the game is to score the most kills before time runs out, whoever has the most kills wins the game! The game was awarded 3rd place in the best artistic achievement category at Level Up 2017 and competed amongst 80 other games from over 20 different colleges/universities.
Valhalla Showdown Gameplay
Design Commentary
Our game concept was inspired by games such as PowerStone 2, Gang Beasts and Fuzion Frenzy. The idea was conceived when a team member during our pre-production meetings suggested of having a funny/ridiculous theme of dropkicks and Vikings. At first our team of Game Designers found it very difficult to incorporate something like a dropkick as a core mechanic into a brawler type of game, however after few minutes of brainstorming I suggested the possibility of incorporating environment hazards that the players can use to guide their dropkicks and score kills, alongside items/weapons that can be picked up to help facilitate the combat. This idea was immediately approved by the team due to its goofy/ridiculous combat style.
Having pitched the concept of incorporating weapons and environment hazards I was left in charge of designing the level and scripting the various hazards/traps along with the design of weapons/items that will be used. Since I was also one of the two programmers for the game, I worked with my co-programmer to delegate tasks so that we did not end up interfering with each other’s work too often. Additionally, I also wrote and maintained the Game Design Document (GDD) until game completion, so the rest of the team members were aware of what work was needed to be done for the game. The document was accessible to each team member and where allowed to make changes to it regarding their specific roles.
During production the team faced many challenges that needed to be overcome to complete the game. The first and a major hurdle we faced was regarding the camera position. Initially the team had settled on an isometric camera angle, however due to the way my co-programmer had scripted the player movements it was very difficult for players to control their characters with a still camera and it did not do justice to the 3D artists that put so much detail in their models. Therefore, we experimented with various different types including 4 person split screen. This however did not feel satisfying for a local multiplayer party game because it took away from the spectating standpoint. After thoroughly studying the PowerStone 2 dynamic camera I scripted the same camera behavior in our game which worked out perfectly as it provided a full view of the level and adjusted itself to all players on screen and also provided an interesting view point for spectators. Additionally, since the camera was now moving/rotating I also scripted the basic player movement for my co-programmer so that the player movement would always match the camera rotation leaving him to continue working with the dropkick mechanic.
The second hurdle the team faced was the combat and its design regarding the usage of dropkicks vs punches. After several playtests and iterations one of the major feedbacks we were getting was that punches were not as satisfying as the dropkick which simply felt like the better option between the two due to the damage and utility of knock back. To help balance this I suggested that we allow punches to stun the players, this meant that stunned players would need to smash a button to get out of the stun effect giving others a chance to aim a dropkick effectively, and as an added special effect dropkicking a stunned player would send them flying further similar to Super Smash Bros. Thus adding utility to the punches and turning them into something that will help players utilize their dropkicks effectively. This turned out to be a great design decision as players felt like there were times when punches where far more useful than simply dropkicking, hence creating more depth to the combat.
While designing the level and doing the environment composition for the game I made sure to utilize the concept of risk and reward as much as possible. That is why a lot of the weapon spawn locations are placed near environment hazards, this is to ensure that if players try to go for weapons that would greatly help in achieving kills then they also had a good chance of being dropkicked into a trap by a pursuer. Furthermore, I made sure to place the weapons and item spawns as spread apart as possible such that players would never congregate around one specific area of the map, instead continuously running around having fights over item drops and weapon spawns. To help with this I scripted a “randomizer” to my item/weapon spawn script so that weapons and items would not spawn in the same location all the time. Ultimately, the game was loved by many players when it was publicly showcased at Level Up 2017 and we even had massive line up of players at our booth calling over their friends to challenge them in our beat ‘em up party game.
Contribution Details
Game Design:
• Successfully help conceive and incorporate the idea of dropkicks into a fun game concept.
• Wrote the Game Design Document (GDD) and maintained the doc through game completion.
• Worked on balancing the combat mechanics of dropkicks, punches and weapons.
• Designed the functionality of weapons and item pick-ups.
• Helped in creating simple and intuitive controls for players to easily to pick up and play.
Level Design:
• Designed and refined the entire level for the game.
• Served as the primary point of contact for level design and environment art.
• Worked on the environment composition and lighting for the level.
• Worked with the VFX artist to place and trigger FX such as boulder explosion, fire and
smoke.
• Worked with the sound designer to trigger SFX at the right time and place.
• Created and implemented VFX such as tunnel fires and weapon effects.
Programming/Scripting:
• Main Camera movement to ensure that all players remained on screen, while providing an
interesting spectator view.
• Basic character movement to match the camera rotation.
• All of the levels traps and environment hazards such as fire tunnels, spike pits/walls,
elevator, and minecart system. As well as prototyped traps such as spinning saw blades,
crushing walls, swinging axes and touch plate spike traps that were not included in the
final level design.
• Player re-spawn system.
• Axe and Spear weapons.
• Weapons and item spawn system.
• Loading screens and the simultaneous background loading of the level and player scenes.
• Player weapon/item pick up, switch and drop controls.
• Created and implemented the Minecart animations, weapons and items idle animations.
• Hookup animations such as jumping and falling.
• Served as the primary point of contact for version control software (Source Tree).
• Countless misc. scripting tasks such as bug fixes and creating easy to use triggers/flags
for the co-programmer so that he did not need to go inside and understand how my script
worked in order to access variables and important functions.