WEEK 7: THE HORROR GENRE
Welcome back to another blog post in this series! The course is almost finished already. It went by pretty quickly! We are now at week #7 of the course Level Design For Games on CGMA! This week, we are exploring idea in the horror genre! I admit that I'm not a big fan of horror games and movies in general, so this topic was a bit hard for me. I do read some horror books though and I think I found something that was good enough to work with.
ASSIGMENT
Here are the requirements for this week's level:
- Create a pitch document for a mission
- Include an intensity chart
- Create a goal for the player
- Make a level and a mission that is narrative-driven
- Include a NPC character that will help the player somehow
- Establish believable boundaries
- Lock the player into tight spaces at some point
Here's a little recap on things I wanted to improve or learn with this new assignment:
- Add some lines here and there from your character interacting with the world
- Learn how to make a better mission system
- Have more than one line in dialogs
And with that, let's get to work!
LET'S DO THE WORK!
Something new this week that took me a lot of time: the mission pitch document. As I said, the horror genre is not my favorite, so I really struggled to find ideas at first...
1. BRAINSTORM / MOODBOARD & INTENTIONS
Having idea is always my favorite part! I found inspirations in books I love (The Seventh Son, The Witcher) and in weird movies I enjoyed (The Green Knight, mostly). After many weird ideas, I settled on this one:
The cleaned up moodbard!
You are some kind of Witcher and you need to help a deserted town to get rid of it's ghost by helping her retrieve her head...
WHO: Esmond, A Witcher
WHEN: Medieval Time
WHERE: Murktown, a small haunted village
WHAT: Help the town get rid of it's ghost
WHY: You need a place to eat and sleep to replenish, but water is not available because of this ghost lady
HOW: Investigating how to help the ghost leave this place for good
2. THE MISSION PITCH
Making the pitch was fun, but really long! I think the hardest part was the intensity chart as I was not really sure how to tackle the beats. But I think it's pretty clear where I wanted to go with this. I invite your to read it here if you'd like!
Intensity Chart
3. BLOCKOUT AND GAME ELEMENTS
For this assignment, we had a little base to work with for the dialogues and mission pacing. I still needed to change a lot of things in blueprint but it was a good start. I made a lot of narrative blueprints, integrated some sounds for cues and ambience and I made a couple of blueprint assets I could use as prefab to help me build some things a little faster. Overall, the map is not extremely big, but it's bigger then I tough I would be able to do in a week so I'm happy with how it turned out!
The whole level
Blueprint assets to use as prefabs
Game assets blueprint I will use in my level
4. LET'S PLAY!
It's time for a little video of the gameplay. Let's talk about the takeaway after that! 😊
KEY TAKAWAYS
Overall, I think this level is not my best but it has some interesting things! The genre was definitely not my cup of favorite tea but I ended up doing something that I think I like and could make a great level!
TO KEEP:
Having more than one line on dialogues is cool!
Moodiness is on point 👌
I think I used sounds cues well
TO IMPROVE:
I think the navigation in this level is a bit simple and could be mode interesting
My dialogues are a little rushed and could be better and clearer to the player
Make it more clear when your character is speaking VS the NPCs
TO LEARN:
Find out how to make more interdependencies work in my mission beats so the player doesn't break the flow
How to use sounds in areas
Obviously, there are many more things to learn, but this is what comes to mind to me right away! Onto the next level! Let's keep this brain learning and the creativity juice flowing!
As always, I made a little commentary video on my Youtube chanel if this is something that interests you!
Thank you for following my journey! I hope you enjoy it!
See ya!
- Caro
