QAMAQ
QAMAQ is an action-adventure game, in pixel-art,
made with a 7-person team.
It was my first experience on a non-jam video game, a multiple months-work, in Winter & Spring 2018.
It helped me learn a bunch of stuff about working in team (especially communication) , Game-Designing process, and working with the Unity Engine.
An authentic longplay of the game.
SUMMARY :
Specs : PC game / Solo / 2D / Top-Down Camera / Keyboard Controller / Made with Unity Engine
Genre : Action / Adventure
MY TASKS
Game Design - Sound Design - 'Game Dev'
GAME DESIGN
It was our first long-term game. We needed to learn how to efficiently use Unity Engine.
So, we opted for an efficient gameplay, with a lot of feedback.
The exercise needed us to add adventure parts, so we did a small dialog system, with a skill tree.
It soon appeared that for our game to be fun, we needed to work a lot on those skills. I had to design them, and then balance their power. At first we had 24 planned competences. When it appeared that we couldn't have a satisfying enough gameplay with the base attacks, and that too much skills was too complex for a game as small as it is, we lowered the skills number.
I worked with draw.io and google sheets, to write the hostile mob names, lifepoints, behaviors, and skills, with their effects, cooldown, and ranges. Then , we thinked about how to do them on the engine, which was the more judicious to keep in scope, and worked with the selection onto the final stage of the project. Even if the final product is just the emerged part of the design iceberg we did, it was necessary to have only a few mechanics to polish them, as the main challenge was technical.
This was the first draft of our skills tree : We wanted skills that could bypass level design elements, and others just for fight. We had to narrow it down.
The term "OST" is pretty ironic here.
But it made me acknowledge a lot of FL Studio tools.
SOUND DESIGN
I like Sound Design : As i'm not that good in graphical skills, and i'm still learning in coding, I can't do really tremendous visual feedbacks for my games. However, I find really important the sound in games, and have alot of fun registering sounds myselfs, then twisting them on Audacity or FL Studio to create SFX.
Therefore, during the final stages of the project, I made & implemented all SFX and musics of the game. For the music, I tried to use South-American instruments, to stay in the same aethetic universe : Charango, Siku... I also tried to inspire myself with traditional andean music. I have no musical formation, and for my next projects, I often only did Sound Design while someone with musical composition notions did the music, dividing the tasks for a better efficiency.
'GAME DIRECTOR'
...Ok, the term Game Dev is pretty wide. But on such a project, I was really handling every aspects of the game experience, as mentioned precedently in Design, but also in their realization.
However, on this game, I worked a lot on the coherence between assets ;
I worked on graphical and cultural research, to give the game a genuine aesthetic, while respecting the culture that inspired the world the game's settled in. I also held the game's macro vision, especially working with our Level designer to ensure the difficulty curve & world coherence were right.
I helped with VFX, by making small particle effects, supervising, tweaking and integrating pixel-art animated VFXs, as well as integrating animations .
I also worked on animated post process effects.
I wanted to put harmony and coherence in the game's creative aspects. And it was difficult : I had no previous management skills and knowledge, and it made me learn alot on communication, and what teamwork was.
I put 'Game Dev' here because it sums up what i've done on the project, and what i aspire to do better in the future : Helping giving a general view of what the game would be like, not only by writing documents, but also by participating in every aspects of the game creation.
We first worked by doing photoshop mockups, then I used those mockups to rebuild them onto the engine, by reusing their layers and post process effects.
Synopsis :
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There is a story,from ancient times, relating the life of a young monk named Iwka. He lived in a coloured world, where life is everywhere. Becau[...]
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Game Pitch :
The game has got a top-down camera. You have to move around, hit enemies, and you can use powers to ease your way through em. the goal is simple : get to the temp[...]
The team was composed of 4 Game Design & Management section students, and 3 Game Art section students :
GAME DESIGN :
• Sébastien Butor
• Killian Gales
• Joris Fabre
• ...And me
GAME ART :
• Clara Wimmer
• André Rizkallah
• Céleste Ébran