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Title_Ashes.png

Description

This project was made during my student exchange in Belgium. There, I joined a small team of 3 2d artists and 1 programmer who had started the development of the project Ashes.

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Thus, Ashes is an action / adventure game which uses the themes of melancholy and depression in a style that combines both pixel art and 3D graphics.

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In a world corrupted by dead gods' ashes, we control a character who has the capacity to harness the power of corruption and use it to fight or navigate the environment.

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The player will have to travel the world and enter the minds of corrupted men to heal them.

Platform
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PC

Engine
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Unity

Genre
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  • Action / Adventure

  • RPG

  • Single Player

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Features
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  • Collect ressources

  • Use ressources to fight monsters

  • Use ressources to create paths

  • Speak with NPC

  • Combo combat system

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Tasks
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  • Level Design

  • Game Design

  • Level Art on some areas

  • Project Management

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Development time
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​4 months

Team size
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5 persons

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Main mechanics

Mech_Fight.png
Fight monsters
Mech_BuildBridges.png
Use ressources to build bridges
Mech_PickPlant.png
Pick up healing plants
Mech_Heal.png
Use healing plants to regain health
Mesh_Dialogue.png
Dialogue with NPC
Mech_AbsorbCorruption.png
Collect ressources

Level Design - Dengaon Mountain

Quest

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A young boy asks for help because his father, gone mad, hurt his mother and fled into the mountain full of monsters.

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Goal

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Find the young boy's father

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Design intentions

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  • Linear level with some secret areas offering rewards in the form of items to pick up.

  • Feeling of climbing a mountain. The secret areas must go downward to indicate the players that they are not on the main path.

  • Mix between combat and exploration.

  • Avoid backtracking to encourage player to move forward

  • Fixed camera:

    • Make sure the character is never hidden behind obstacles

    • Hide rewards and secret areas behind objects

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The level consist of 8 zones with a progressive difficulty curve. The player actions alternate between combat against ranged and melee enemies and building bridges to explore the level.

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To build this level, I first created a series of small areas that can be quickly connected together. Then, I started to combine those areas in many ways to eventually form the final level. Once I was happy with the final layout, I used the Unity Terrain tool to give some height variation to the ground but also to quickly paint and add foliage to the environment. 

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Below are some iterations of the level

The final map

LD_FullMap.png
LD_Legend.jpg

  • Safe zone

  • Introduction to the level

  • Player receives the main quest

  • Intro to range enemies

  • Area designed to teach the player  how to deflect ranged attacks

  • Intro to spawner enemies

  • Player must collect both        ressources to progress

  • Secret area guarded by 2 spawners

  • Bridge cost is refunded to prevent softlocking 

  • Intro to large melee enemies

  • These enemies can turn into a ball and charge the character. The idea was to place him on top of a slope so it feels like a big rock is chasing the character

  • Here the player has nothing new to learn.

  • Ranging from a medium difficulty area up to the boss, the player must use everything he knows so far to survive the level 

  • Safe zone

  • Preparation before the final section of the level

  • I wanted the player to feel like he was now really high in the mountain

  • A dialogue event starts with a corrupted man

  • The man transforms into a huge monster, grabs the character and bring him inside his mind for a boss fight

  • Symmetrical section with some verticality

  • Player must fight melee enemies at the bottom while dodging ranged attack coming from the top

  • Learn combat mechanics

  • Intro to melee enemies

  • Learn how to collect ressources

  • Learn how to build bridges

Some zones in further details

Blocking

Game Design

Absorb corruption

Mech_AbsorbStep1.png

Corrupted object is blocking the path

Mech_AbsorbStep2.png

Character absorb the corruption

Mech_AbsorbStep3.png

The path is open

Mech_AbsorbStep4.png

The object becomes corrupted again

The main idea for the game was to give the character the power to remove corruption from the environment creating pathway by doing so.

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To enforce the idea that there is no hope to save the world from the corruption, all the objects on which the corruption has been removed become corrupted again after some times. However, since it also leads to infinite ressources, we had to remove this idea from the game.

Use corruption

Mech_UseAshesAttack.png
Mech_UseAshesDefend.png

Defend

Attack

Mech_UseAshes.png
Mech_UseAshesBridges.png

Construct bridges

If the character have enouph ressources, he can use them either in combat to defend or attack enemies or to explore the environment. Due to a lack of time, the corruption cannot be used in combat in the current version of the game.

Bridge construction

Mech_BridgeStep1.png

Player sees a treasure

Mech_BridgeStep2.png

Holding R2 causes a spline to grow

Mech_BridgeStep3.png

Moving the joystick controls the direction of the spline

Mech_BridgeStep4.png

Releasing R2 materializes the spline into a bridge

Mech_BridgeStep5.png

Player walks on the bridge and collect the treasure

This was the main idea for how the player can use the corruption ressource to explore the environment.

 

If the player as enouph ressources, he can hold the R2 button and move the joystick to create and control the direction of a spline. Releasing the R2 button causes the spline to materialize into a bridge made out of ashes. He can then walk on the bridge to reach other areas.

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This idea was a bit ambitious for a 4 months production so we had to simplify the concept.

More time?

  • A more polished game design that explains everything about the game from A to Z

    • What is the main quest? Where is going the main character? What are the locations of the game (villages? forests? Temples?)

    • Having a lot to do in a short amount of time, we had to simplify a lot the game design. This is clearly the aspect of the game that would require more time and more thinking.

  • The bridge system described above

    • It was suppose to give the player a more puzzleish experience. The player was not suppose to know exactly where to create the bridges, he was suppose to find how and where to place them in a semi-linear level. (Find your way)

  • Combat skills using the corruption mechanic

  • The bird village before Dengaon Mountain

    • It's a village in which the inhabitants all wear masks representing birds

  • Boss fight inside the mind of the Chief from the bird village

  • More quest, more objectives, more dialogues

  • Choices in dialogues

  • A skill tree offering multiple path and multiple ways to play the game

  • More polished combo system which allows the player to creates his own combo​​

    • The idea here was to create a huge list of combos and give the player the choice to place them in the order he wants

  • If the character has to much corruption, he will transform into an ashes monsters for a short amount of time giving a lot of power in the hand of the player but at a high cost.

    • Player could unlock monster skills that would decrease his humanity but increase his monster form which could have an impact on the dialogue with NPCs

  • Morality system based on the action of the player such as ignoring NPCs that are asking for help​

  • Allied system

    • This system was already in place but we had to cut it to reduce production time​

  • Inventory and equipment system​

    • Collecting healing plants is "fun" but it's really not enouph. The reward of looting the rare fire sword after beating a huge boss is part of the RPG experience​

  • The pixel art and 3D mix is quite interesting but could also be part of the main mechanic. Pixel art could represent corrupted objects while 3D could represent non corrupted objects​

  • More effect, more "juice" while building bridges, defeating enemies and collecting ressources

  • Living environment

    • Enemies move around the level​

    • Critters such as rabbits and birds flee when the player approaches them

  • Human structure such as ruins, temples, houses​

Credits

Joffrey Baribeau

Alexandre Brassero-Martin

Mary Labbé

Heiva Martin

Maxime "Thex" Samyn

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Thanks to :

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Medhat Hanbali - Music composition

Louis Vanheache - Dutch translation

Jochen Hault - German translation

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