Looking Back
It's finally. done. Last night, the Gold Build of our game was built and put into our repository. What a wild ride this has been.
I joined this team back in January, halfway through my senior year, as a Narrative and Level designer. They needed someone to flesh out the world of the game, and help create more of it, and I intended to do just that.
The first few weeks were spent getting to know the game, and plan how much we wanted to do over the course of the semester. Then we dived right in to creating maps and NPCs, sketching things out on paper first, the implementing them in-game with the tools provided for us by the programmers. We had a number of meetings about the world and story of the game, and what kinds of characters we wanted the player to meet.
By the time Spring Break rolled around, we were in full production mode, generating content. I was in charge of creating Neon Pompeii, the second area of the game. The area consists of a city section, a climb section, and a sky section.
The city provides a nice entryway to what kinds of challenges the player will have to face, with introductions to the important characters and common enemies. The upper reaches of the city are more difficult to reach, and intended for skilled players to challenge themselves and find frogs.
The climb section has the player making their way up the side of the city and into the clouds. More complex enemies are introduced, and the player has to learn how to fight while keeping their footing, or else they'll fall back to the bottom of the room.
The sky section of the map is the last section, requiring the player to face a gauntlet of enemies whole on precarious footing, with falling resulting in death instead of just having to climb back up like in the climb. The sky is also home to Neon Pompeii's biggest challenges, and biggest rewards. Various challenges tempt the players to prove their mastery with the promise of some sweet frogs at the end.
After finally reaching the end of Neon Pompeii, the player must face Capravola, a goat-demon who is the ruler of one of the local mob factions, and conspirator with the being that snatched your frogs. I had a lot of fun working with the other designers to come up with this guy, and I'm glad it got implemented so well. He's my favorite boss in the game.
We laughed together, worked together, sometimes cried together, and I had a wonderful time with this team. And in the end, we made a fantastic game that people will enjoy. And that's what's important.