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ShenMetal

My Final Project for AEC in Game and Level Design Course at College Lasalle. It was developed by a team of 8, including me, over a span of 3 months. The game is far from being finished, and it will again go into further development later this year.

ShenMetal is a FPS action-adventure game with some of the best narratives tied to it. Some of the Main Mechanics of the game include Shooting, Parkour, and Time Manipulation powers.

This was a very fun project to work on, as it is an FPS game, one of my favorite genres of games, and also has a unique element of time manipulation, which complements the fast-paced FPS gameplay pretty well.

Intro

The game starts with the protagonist falling into a bedroom from a portal. This bedroom resembles architecture from a previous generation and has some tech from the future. There is a dead body on the bed; the dead person seems to have some royal garments on him.

The player freaks out. When the guards charge into the bedroom and start calling him the kingslayer, you escape and embark on the journey to find out why you were called to this place.

Design Responsibilities:

Gameloop and Encounter Design
Combat Design
Boss Design

Game Loops

Encounters consist of either combat, puzzles, or both.

Encounters will appear in a level to progress and lead into the secondary loop, where we interact with a Zaman anchor (checkpoint) to save the game and upgrade weapons. Anchors appear after each encounter.

To complete the secondary loop, we will unveil the narrative as you progress.

To use your time powers, the player requires Zaman essence (mana), which is earned by killing enemies. One Zaman is provided on a cooldown if all are consumed [required for certain puzzle and parkour sections where time stopping/slowing is necessary].

The game has a limited supply of Ammo and Zaman drops, which brings us to the other loop on the left of the chart.

Where you can stop time by using Zaman and catch an enemy bullet with your gun, this gives you a Phantom bullet, which, if fired on an enemy, applies an instant stun, allowing you to perform a finisher and in turn gain high chances of Zaman and Ammo drops.

Player Combat Design

Combat mechanics consist of Shooting and Melee attacks. Dash to be used to move around quickly and dodge enemy bullets. Together, these make fast-paced combat from a medium range, where you have to shoot, dash, and melee enemies to finish them when they have lower health than 20%.

Another side of the combat was ammo and Zaman resource efficiency, discussed in the game design section before.

To incentivize the visioned combat features, the combat design pillars were added to the design.

AI Combat Design

The flip side of this coin is the enemy AIs.

The AI was also designed in a way that would serve the combat design as per our needs.

The player should have information on all AIs around him.
- Must have danger arrows when about to get attacked.
- Helps with bullet tracking and catching.
AIs must position themselves in front of the camera to attack.
- Out-of-POV attacks can happen 10-20% of the time.
The token system.
- More attack tokens are given to the enemies to purposely miss shots when you move. Serves for more bullets in the air to help you stop time and catch bullets.

Boss Design - Time Executioner

The boss encounter takes place at the end of level 1. At this point, the player has faced 3-4 encounters and is familiar with the mechanics of the game. So, the boss is also designed to be not that difficult but still has some unique mechanics tied to him, that the player has to master to defeat him.

The time executioner is an entity of the world the player is in and also has the power to counter your ability to stop time. He walks towards you when you are in a normal time stream and sprints towards you when the time is stopped, giving you a challenge to defeat him by not stopping the time, and if you have to stop, you have to plan it accordingly. {Video*}

Boss Design Document:

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SARYAT KHAN

Technical Game Designer