Genre
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Action - Roguelike
Team Size
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14 devs
Duration
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4 month
The project
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The project is a reimagination of Absolution, an old school project that you can find on this site. Our teachers asked us to work on a new project with our end of the 2nd year project as a base. We wanted Eternal Ways to be more than an evolution of Absolution but we were proud of Absolution and throwing everything wasn’t an option so we balanced our desire to create something new with the essence of what Absolution is.
What I did
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System Designer : mechanic design, balancing, game documentation
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QA Tester
Used Softwares
Powerpoint
Machination
Clickup
Coda.io
Mantis
Beginning of the project
To begin with, the whole group gathered to think about what we should change or not. Absolution was a roguelite and we felt that we did everything we wanted with this mechanic in so we decided that Eternal Ways would be a roguelike (the death erases everything the player accomplished and there is nothing to unlock between 2 runs).
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Absolution is a top-down shooter and a roguelite. The replay value comes from the temporary upgrades the player can get through a run and the definitive upgrades the player can buy between 2 runs. Eternal Ways being a roguelike, we had to throw the idea of definitive upgrades. To not lose some replay value, we thought about different play styles. We kept the essence of Absolution's distance gameplay and added a close combat style gameplay and the possibility to choose what style the player wants to play at the beginning of each run.
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One mechanic praised in Absolution is the angel that could be manually placed and whose area effect could be switched. We couldn’t do that in Eternal Ways because we wanted big swarms of enemies (contrary to Absolution) and we knew that the player wouldn’t be able to manage the swarms while having another character to manage. We decided to simplify the idea of the angel by summoning a pillar whose effect would change according to the player’s play style (distance or close combat).
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In Absolution, we used the Christian afterlife as a background but we’ve been criticized for making poor use of it and we didn’t know how to treat correctly this aspect so we decided to create a whole new mythology that would fit with our mechanics and that we could use the way we want without fearing critics of misusing it.
Roguelite
Roguelike
Definitive upgrades
Different play styles
Angel
Pillar
Christian mythology
Personal mythology
The production
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After Eternal Ways was greenlighted, more people joined our group and we began the production. Our producer created a clickup to track the advancement of everyone’s tasks. A Coda was also used to write what the game would be.
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My first work was to create a machination of the game, firstly to have a better idea of how the game would work and lastly to balance the game. I've used it to explain mechanics to people in the group who might not have fully understood them. I’ve also tried some statistics and I asked the other game designers if they liked the balancing.
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After my system designer’s job was done, I began to test the game. Every day, I talked with the technical designer to know what he just implemented to test it. After that, I tested the game in every way possible, from testing the balancing to looking for bugs by doing improbable things. Other people from the group could also ask me to test specific parts.
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When I found a bug, I listed it on Mantis (with a clip or an image when possible) then I explained it to the concerned people (I took advantage of the fact that we were a small group in a single room).
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Our school had stands at the Japan Touch in Lyon. Me and people of my group went there to do some playtest with strangers. Lot of people tested our game (in the final stage of the development) and talked to us about what they liked or not. I wrote a playtest form and I made people fill it (except people who don't know how to play video games, like kids). The next working day, we discussed about the feedbacks and what we should change according to what people liked or not and what we wanted Eternal ways to be. People from our school also tested the game in different stages of the production because we needed feedbacks as fast as possible to have ime to make changes without being late on the schedules.
Presentation document
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We presented the game to a jury. This is the document we used
Trailer
Walkthrough
Machination
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Features functioning on Machination
Eternal Ways High Concept Document
Link
