SHUTTLEFALL
Senior Year Student Team Project at DigiPen Institute of Technology​​
Roles: Design Lead, Narrative Designer, Narrative Content Designer, Writer, Gameplay Systems Designer, Level Designer, UI Designer, UX Designer, User Researcher, Technical Game Designer.
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Tools: Unreal Engine 5, Figma, Krita, Google Docs, Jira, Perforce / Helix Core.
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Skills: Emergent Storytelling, Environmental Storytelling, Creative Writing, White-Boxing, Gameplay System Design, Game Feel, UI Wireframing, Blueprinting, Design Iteration, Playtesting.
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Genre: Rouge-like "Sit and Survive" esk Horror Experience similar to games like Lethal Company, Iron Lung, and Five Nights at Freddy's.
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Target Audience: Fans of Rouge-Likes and Horror games, those driven by Game Mastery, and player's who enjoy Immersive Ludonarrative focused Storytelling.
Ludonarrative Cohesive Design
On SHUTTLEFALL, I played the role of Lead Game Designer, focusing on crafting a cohesive experience which reinforced the intended emotions and direction outlined by our game's Creative Director. From Level Design to UI, I designed, tested, and iterated on many elements of the game to work towards actualizing SHUTTLEFALL's creative vision. Below, you can see my approach using all the game's elements for creating emergent storytelling, world-building, tutorialization, and creating interesting and engaging scenarios for the player.
The Manual
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User Research and Playtesting
My role as a designer on SHUTTLEFALL began with deeply analyzing the initial demo of the game our team's Creative Director designed. I both played the demo version extensively, as well as preformed several playtests with various audiences to determine what the reaction to the game looked like to different kinds of people. The Creative Director and I had a few thoughts about things we wanted to add depth to, and our playtest results helped to inform us as to where the game was in need of design changes to either alter player engagement or to better communicate with the player what we wanted them to do at different times.
Based on the feedback received, we determined that we wanted to add further depth to the gameplay loop than it initially explored. Work would need to be done to assist players with less experience playing this type of game to be able to pick up the gameplay loop, but in working to embrace designing for our target audience, adding variety and additional things to consider during gameplay would be the path we chose to pursue.
Creating an Involved Chaos
To create a more involved gameplay loop, I contributed two main additional systems to the shuttle phase of the game.
The process for both began with illustrating the design in a brief document which would be handed off to a programmer for implementation, so documentation was written with length and legability for programmers in mind.
You can take a look at the design documentation I wrote to the right.
From a Narrative Design perspective, systems like these serve as a tool for controlling the stress of the player. Since our game doesn't express narrative in any traditional or explicit way, these kinds of systems help us frame the scenario, and sell the world-building. Since we wanted to communicate that the player character was working for a company that cares little for them and is supplying them with failing and damaged equipment, creating systems that reinforce failure or that are convoluted in motion helps us put the player in the shoes of this kind of character without explicitly saying so.
The first of the two systems was the Junk Item and Incineration System.
The thinking behind this system was to add a caveat to the ore mining process, which would both ask the player to pay additional attention to the mining process and also to add consequences to cutting corners or taking damage from Alien attacks. This means the player has one more thing to consider while going through the gameplay loop, with a clear consequence for failing to do so, which because it takes time to make mistakes, could be fatal to a Shuttle Contact (our terminology for each run).
The second system introduced was a lock and key system for acquiring the repair tool.
A problem we identified with the repair tool was that it could be distracting to new players while they were first trying to figure out how to play the game, and between the ease of picking up the repair tool as well as its gun-like silhouette, it was way too easy for players to acquire the repair tool and make a false assumption about what kind of game they were playing. This then made learning how to make progress in the game all the more cumbersome because now the player had a preconception for the experience, which was framing it all wrong.​
To solve for this, I put the repair tool in a fire extinguisher-like case, which would be locked when the player first enters the shuttle. This way the player can see that there is a repair tool, but not be able to access it immediately, which creates foreshadowing for it, but doesn't let the player get too distracted from the tutorialization. The key to the repair tools box is found on the shuttle, but the player will have to read the Shuttle Operation Manual to find out where, which means that now the player won't be able to get the repair tool without first having it put in the perspective of the rest of the game and the way it is to be played. What this also does, is create additional tension in emergency moments by now adding an additional step to the module repair process, which sacrifices vital seconds meaning the player is again given one more thing to think about in the gameplay loop should they lose control of a module's thermals.
The Mothership Level
Designing a Home Base for the Player between Each Mission
Home Away From Home
The Mothership is the player's home base in between missions during the game loop. Here the player can purchase items, progress towards one of two ending scenarios, and sleep to begin the next day.
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The first step of my level design process is looking reference images and researching practical elements of the space as well as considering gameplay opportunities and design challenges. With all of those thoughts in mind, I do a top-down sketch of the space on paper, which will later guide my white-box of the level.
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To the right are a few of my initial sketches for the space.
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A challenge for designing this space was making sure to maintain a cohesive visual presentation with the rest of the game, while trying to create a space that felt like a reprieve for the player. I accomplished this by utilizing a brighter color palette that clashed against the cold and dark Shuttle interior. I also equipped the mothership with more updated technology than what's in the Shuttle level to help further sell friendlier and more inviting nature of the Mothership space. This then also reinforces that the antagonist company to the player, Titania Inc., has really set the player up to fail during each mission, and they may have the resources to provide better for the player, but seemingly have little value for them and choose not to.
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Another challenge for the level was player guidance in a non-linear space. Since this level was designed for the player to enter from multiple angles, where the player may want to do different things during different visits, the space had to be built so the player wouldn't get lost, and would always be well oriented. To achieve this sightlines towards important interactable elements like the SpaceyBay item shop are designed to be easily seen from every entry point, then also being able to serve as something like a landmark in the space.
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After my initial sketches, I moved into Unreal Engine to start working on the white-box of the level in a timely manner which can enable playtesting of the space as quickly as possible.
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Bellow you can see screenshots of the quick finished White-box of the level, fully added to game and set up to be played in only a few hours!
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You can click here to visit my Rapid Level White-boxing Page to learn about how I practice speed and efficiency during the White-boxing process.
White-Box Gallery
The Finished Level
Diegetic Heads Up Display
Using the HUD to Ground the Player Fantasy
Everything is Grounded
Player immersion was one of the most important things to us on SHUTTLEFALL, so how information is communicated to the player becomes a complex, but important problem to solve. Non diegetic UI can be great for many contexts, but for our game we felt it would standout too much from the rest of the game.
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Any information should come from an in universe source, and so things like tutorials and narrative exposition are provided through diegetic means like computer terminals and operation manuals. But one challenge then came from how we would communicate information the player would need to be able to see at all times, like how much noise they were making or how much oxygen remains.
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Inspired by Metroid Prime, I designed a heads up display to mimic the interior view of the player character's helmet. In SHUTTLEFALL you play as a Shuttle Operator, and you are implied throughout the game to constantly be wearing a space suit. Similar to Metroid, one the helmet's visor some information is displayed to the player, specifically that information which is tied directly to the player character's suit. This solution enabled us to convey the necessary information to the player while not breaking immersion with otherwise intrusive non diegetic elements.
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Another challenge was figuring out the actual visual look of the helmet interior. Too much detail could make the visor look too high tech or too obtrusive from game play. I tried several variations of shapes inspired primarily from Lethal Company, some even with different visor tints and UI indicators.
The one we ended up going with for the game is very minimal list with helmet shapes only on the top and bottom of the screen as to no interfere too heavily with the player's field of view. The Noise and Oxygen indicators are vertical and one either sides of the screen, this way they can still be seen even while the player is interacting with modules or reading the Operation Manual.
Opening Crawl
The Introductory Exposition to Set the Tone for the Experiance
Setting the Tone
How the player is first introduced into the world of the game is something we thought was important.
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We knew our game had a lot to onboard the player to, but we also knew that exposition before the player has any real context of the game will likely be forgotten or not stick with the player in a meaningful way. This being said, we felt that starting with something before live gameplay would be important for correctly setting the tone.
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Those ideas created a challenge for how to start the game. To solve this, I wrote this brief opening text crawl. While short, what this does is establish the cold and uncaring relationship between the player character, and the company they work for. A few instructions for what the player should be doing are also provided here, though they are there primarily to contextualize the crawl. The level design on it's own carries the actual tutorial, letting this text focus on setting the tone for the game.
Game Writing
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Who's talking to who?
One of the challenges I encountered when first joining the team was figuring out how to create content variety in the way the player would interact with things in the space to progress the game. To Solve that, I took some time reviewing the art assets we had that weren't actively being used in the game, and I found an asset that would do the job of serving as a new kind of interactable component.
In Shadow's Grove, the player interacts with the spirits of past travelers which can be found at the base of various Swords left in the ground. The change I made to this was making these spirits people that only Astrid is able to converse with. With the new asset I was repurposing, I designed a new interaction system called 'Howl Points', which would be places where Eri would interact with spirits of the lost.
What this design did for us is provide a way to characterize both Astrid and Eri further as separate entities. Astrid converses with character's which try to help guide or misdirect her journey of moving forward and getting past the loss of Eri, whereas the character's Eri converses with draws to question the moral implications of not letting Astrid go, and enabling her to repeat her pain.
Room for Improvement
While mechanically, this solution helped offer further diversity in the gameplay experience while also providing our writer more room to explore the character's, the specific asset did present issues in the level design. The Howl Pad being flat made it difficult to see from most angles, which made it difficult to use as a landmark and focal point for guiding the player to it.
To solve for this, I collaborated with our VFX team to add a ray of light effect which stemmed from the Howl Points before the player interacted with them, which can be seen from all over the map. I also implemented a series of cameras which would highlight each of the Howl Point locations to the player when they first begin the quest to search for them, and I was able to make use of a cut particle trail system to further help guide the player to the first Howl Point, in a similar fashion to the way Fi guides link to the Goddess Sword at the beginning of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
