Team Size: 11
Role: Game Designer
Dev. Time: 8 weeks
Elephantastic
Engine: Unreal Engine
Releases: Itch
What is Elephantastic:
Elephantastic is a platformer where you play as an elephant in a circus with incredibly fragile platforms. These platforms will fall down when you walk over them and you'll have to utilize this mechanic to make your foes, the mice, fall down to the ground.
Designed & Balanced the mice's projectiles
The enemies needed to break up the ahead-planning challenge of the game. They were designed so that the player needed to combine the preplanning with improvisation. The core of the game is a platformer and you needed to do some planning beforehand to win but the enemies are a challenge that is designed to break up the plan and make the player improvise on the spot.
Example: The Slime Projectile
The slime projectile was made with smart AI to shoot in front of the player and that created a layer on the ground which was hard to push through. This created an obstacle for the player to move through since it is less than ideal to stand still on the unstable platforms. It is better to mitigate the risk and move around the slime than through it. This was intentionally designed to break up the planning of the player and make them improvise.
Level Design
The levels were cut into moments that I tested in a separate play space. My level design process was as follows:
1. Sketch on paper//in paint.net.
2. Build the moment in UE4
3. Refine the moment in an isolated space
4. Stich the moments together and create a playable level from start to finish.
This process created a feedback loop at every stage and made communication with the team easy.