The Old Door - solo project

A 10-20 minute shooter platformer built in Unity, and an exercise in level design; I wanted to make a game that rewarded exploration and encouraged the player to form their own goals and grow in power at their own pace. Starting out with Unity’s FPS demo for the base gameplay, I overhauled almost every system to give the game its own identity.

Significant Contributions:

Design

• Low interference level design

• 8 playtests/iterations

Coding:

• Four different projectile types and the ability to switch between them

• Respawn Functionality

• Location based audio modulation

• Boss moveset and enemy summoning

Shaders/art

• Grass/Trees shader with wind and player interaction

• Orientation agnostic texture shader for environment assets

• Character animations for boss moveset

Minimalist Direction

I like to show, not tell the player where to go and what to do. There are only two goals that the game directly tells you, and it’s possible to only receive one, depending on where you travel first. Upon first seeing the giant glowing tower outside, the player is asked to make the connection that their given quest “Step through The Old Doorway” is referring to this tower without any waypoints or quest markers. The tower can’t be reached until the player defeats the boss on the bottom floor of the dungeon and collects the jetpack upgrade.

Design Challenge:

Originally, the prompt was “Step through The Doorway”, playtesters found this confusing as there are a lot of doorways in the game. Adding the modifier “Old” to the prompt made this leap of logic more consistent because now the Doorway is described as unique in some way.