Hold my Beer !
Trailer
Pitch :
In a world where dwarves are oppressed and belittled by humans.
You play as Kouydefèr, a proud dwarf who stumbles out of a tavern completely drunk.
Unfortunately, a royal carriage spills your delicious pint of beer. It's the last straw, and you decide to storm the king's castle and knock everyone down.
However, this task is not easy, and you are in for a rough ride ! You will be able to install various bonuses to help you on your journey !
Game concept & constraints :
This time, the constraints of the assignment were to create a FPS game using Unreal Engine within 4 weeks.
It was challenging to come up with an idea at first, but we eventually decided to go with a "tower attack," as opposed to a tower defense.
The concept of the game is that our character must progress through the gardens of a castle filled with guards who will attack him. To advance, the character must defeat these guards and use gadgets that can be placed on the terrain beforehand.
Conception
The gadgets :
During the strategy phase, the player views the terrain from above and has a budget to spend on placing four different objects on the map :
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Barricades : These provide cover for the player and block enemies' paths.
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Healing Potions : These restore the player's health.
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Explosive Barrels : These create area damage when the player throws their beer mug at them (but be careful not to stand too close!).
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Jump Pads : These allow the player to jump over obstacles and take shortcuts.
We had to carefully think about how these gadgets could be utilized to bring variety to the gameplay.
The level design :
Level design was the biggest challenge of the project. It was very difficult to find a format where the game was both fun and balanced, and where the gadgets had real utility.
Initially, we started with a fairly open map where the player could quickly reach the end of the level, and the difficulty was focused on combat against the guards. However, the gadgets were almost useless, and it was too easy to complete the game.
We then attempted to create multiple levels to add more playtime, but the core issue remained, and this approach placed too much workload on the game artists.
Ultimately, I decided to start over completely and designed a long, linear level with a series of small interconnected rooms and shortcuts that could be used with the gadgets.
This decision made the game much more enjoyable and complete, and it turned out to be a real success.
The balancing :
The final challenge in game design was balancing. Between the damage dealt by different enemies, the range of their attacks, their patrol paths, and their ability to detect the player, the game presented a difficulty level that was tricky to manage.
We also had to balance the player's damage output, as well as the power and cost of each gadget.
In my opinion, the final result is quite good. During playtesting, players demonstrated that it took several attempts to complete the game, but someone who mastered the various aspects of the gameplay could start speedrunning it. This introduced a new competitive element, with players aiming to achieve the fastest completion time.