Chester

High Game Concept

Slip into the role of Chester, a cunning and homicidal mimic murdering its way through a big unknown castle. Hone your stalking skills by sneaking through the dark dungeon tunnels and tightly secured treasure chambers, but be careful to not get caught by the watchful eyes of the royal guard. Conceal yourself by imitating lifeless objects and hide in the nooks and crannies. Make noise by swallowing and spitting objects to distract patrols, just to eventually mislead them right into your maw. Remember to keep your hunger at bay at all times, to not fall into a blood crazed frenzy.

High Level Concept

The murderous Mimic Chester escaped the dungeons below the castle and finds itself in the huge royal library. All the bloodshed has not gone unnoticed, guards are now patrolling every inch of the mansion, but the twisted paths give Chester the perfect cover to continue it's killing spree.

Context

This Game was created in the context of the Level Engineering course in a month and serves as a showcase for the design of the second level. Therefore it is not complete. Gameplay and Assets are placeholders. The first level and tutorial can be viewed here:

https://the-fifth-king.itch.io/chester

Breakdown of the Level

After a few sketches and multiple iterations this was the first design of the level. The color coding represents different areas and intensities of gameplay (green to red; blue being a special puzzle area). 

You start at the green area and when you enter through the doors, the camera presents you with different possibilities:

The player sees a path right in front of them, leading down and then up some stairs again. As soon as the player walks down the first set of stairs, they will notice a second path to the left.

The straight path leads to a dead end, a collapsed bookshelf blocks the way forward. The way around it leads through a lot of guard - either with very good timing, a good distraction or by taking a detour to dispose of the guards one by one clears you the path.

The other path, the more hidden one, leads you in a darker area, which is a bit longer, but here you can avoid guards with good timing and distraction altogether.

The two paths lead together and up some stairs, where the player finds a new checkpoint and a blocked path. This area was intended to hold a small puzzle to unlock the checkpoint, but due to time reasons it was not implemented. With no other option, the player has to turn around and notices a new path, previously hidden in the darkness.

This path leads the player to a previously unexplored area, that they might have only seen if the paid attention to their surroundings. It is higher up than the other regions. The hallway leads you to a small room with some guards and then through a door outside of the library. A pathway where you can admire the view later, you find yourself in the key-room, where you have to distract some guards to get the key. On your way back, they player takes the second path, that they didn't already explore before.

The final room now tests your skills once again, as you maneuver your way through it. The room has a lot of opportunities to hide, but also a lot of guards moving around. If you pay attention to their patterns, you can surprise them from behind.

Playtesting Insights

Implemented

More verticality with high objects - The bookshelves were made to be bigger, objects are now partially obscuring the player's vision. This makes the level more vertical and forces the player to move the camera to look around corners.

Making the Library more realistic - The walls are now used more to hold bookshelves, some were removed as they would normally be in the way in a library. This point only partially got implemented, since it is - after all - still a game and making the library very open and orderly would be boring.

Separating areas - The areas in the final build are separated more strongly, by placing borders, opening up the areas internally and adding colors and objects to make them more distinct.

Giving the player a clear path to progress - The player can see the path in the beginning of the level clearly and the way its lit to make for better wayfinding.

Bait & Switch - When getting to the second checkpoint, the path to progress is obscured in purpose, making the player walk into a dead end and surprising him when he turns around.

Using books to block paths - I used a fallen bookshelf and a lot of books and rubble around it to break up the patterns. This could have been used more to block off other paths, but the assets are still placeholders.

Things to consider in the future

Giving the Player a hint where to go after picking up key - Maybe through a cutscene or some noise from the direction of the now unlocked path.

More colors and lights to separate the areas - Halfway implemented, make the light more natural or use different colors for books, carpets and similar.

Letting the player choose left or right and then block the already visited path when getting the key - Currently the player could choose the same path twice, making the experience more boring. Another idea would be to present a new path, a shortcut by opening a path OVER the bookshelves to the final room.

The enemies are obviously not scary enough and far from perfect. More variation in player interaction (by hiding between objects, transforming into other objects etc.) could increase the experience from the gameplay aspect.

Tools

In the process of making the game, we developed a few tools, that made our life easier. They were developed with Unity Editor Scripting.

Placing Player to Checkpoints

A simple tool where you can teleport the Player (or any other Object) to the Waypoint you specify and adjust the rotation too.

It takes the waypoints' parent object so it is quicker and also adjusts itself automatically when you add more waypoints in your game.

Random Object Rotation

This tool can be attached to any prefab and the axis to randomly turn around can be ticked.

On placing in the editor, it will be turned and stays this way when going into Playmode.

Random Prefab Replacement

This tool can be used to replace all children of a game object with a number of given prefabs that you can set in the editor window. Additionally, you can choose to rotate the object (random rotation of 90,180,270 or 0 degrees), which is useful for floor objects.

Light Probes Placing Tool

This tool can automatically generate Lightprobes

It places them along the vertices of the Navmesh, you can set a number of iterations (which determines how many vertical layers will be spawned) and additionally you can set a 3D cube and generate regular cubes.

It automatically detects if a Lightprobe would have been spawned inside an object and discards it.

Probes intersecting with objects will be detected and discarded and you have an additional option to merge the generated probes (in case they are too dense) multiple times.