Dead Path by Boss Breaker Studio
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DEAD PATH SYNOPSIS
The player will experience defending their castle’s loot from the invading hero. The game revolves around the player learning and mastering the various tools they’re given to alter the hero’s path and lead them to death. Most of the items they have access to seem very simple and straight forward, but they will learn that the levels get more and more complex as they progress. By the end of the game, the player will have full mastery over each item and will easily be able to go back and perfect each level.
The story of Dead Path follows Gilbert, the Industrial Wizard, as he tries to defend his various chests of loot from Chad, the Hero. The game will use humor and its art style to bring the players into the story and feel invested in the characters. The core loop of the game involves the player iterating their placement of items throughout the level and will lead to a feeling of accomplishment as the player obtains mastery. The main control the player has is during the initial setup phase of the level before they click “GO!” and send Chad running after the loot. As the level is playing itself out, the player has no input and can only witness the results of their setup.
Dead Path’s art style is one of the biggest things that differentiate it from other games. In Dead Path, all the things that hold a lot of value (gameplay-wise) are colored, and the less important things are black, white, or greyscale. This causes our characters and items to pop from the background and give them life. Another thing that separates us from other games is the general idea of killing the Hero. Most games have the player taking control of the Hero and trying to vanquish the main villain, but Dead Path flips the roles and chooses to see things from the other perspective.
Interactable Objects
These are the colored objects in the game, colored to keep them distinct from the environment. All interactable objects in the levels are colored to help create a level of separation from the environment.
Grass Tiles Final
The complete tileset for the grass tiles. The black outline helps to differentiate the foreground from the background and to better help show where the items can be placed. The diagonal lines also help to further separate it from the background visually.
Level Select UI
A design for the Level Select screen. Since this game was on tablet, the icons had to be larger so the player could be able to discern the details better, since the buttons have screenshots of each level. Three levels to a page worked the best.
Main Menu
The Main Menu has a small story in the image. Chad is making his way to Gilbert’s industrial castle to steal all of Gilbert’s retirement fund. The buttons are also large to be clear on a small screen. The use of red for the Play button is to help draw the eye of the player and give the player a quick mental shortcut to get into the game quickly.
UI
The UI bar for the spells is on the left side of the screen. There is a clear delineation between the UI and the level with the vertical bar. The icons are large enough to be grabbed by a finger as well as large enough to be easily discernable between different items.
POST-MORTEM - PERSONAL
WHAT WENT WELL
The more comfortable I got with the group, the more I was willing to communicate things that could potentially be fixed. The vibe of the group gave me some comfort to speak my mind. I communicated as often as I could.
WHAT WENT WRONG
This process brought out a lot of personal issues that I know I need to focus on now to better work in a team dynamic. I can get overwhelmed with emotions in a very stressful environment, so I’m looking into how to best handle that. I know I’m not the best I can be, so I will be addressing my shortcomings.
WHAT I LEARNED
It is okay to speak my mind as people are understanding and would like to be aware of the issues before they become a problem. I need to address these personal issues so they don’t hamper my ability to work on a team as effectively as I know I can. Sometimes people will find different things you should work on and that’s okay.
POST-MORTEM - TEAM
WHAT WENT WELL
Cohesion and communication was really good as well as openness in regard to talking about issues that we were facing.
Team chemistry was also very good as every member of the team got along with each other which correlated to a positive work environment.
Team was also accepting of any criticisms and took them in stride.
Our team was also quite self directed and dependable.
We volunteered and crunched when needed.
Unafraid of cutting features.
WHAT WENT WRONG
Infrequent playtests. We did not build our game and play it enough to really figure out what changes needed to be made.
Although our communication was great throughout the course of the project, there were instances where not all members were informed on the changes that were being made to the game.
Didn't have confirmation on a set schedule, we just assumed.
Time management near the end of milestones felt like we were rushing/crunching for time.
Inconsistent folder structure/ naming conventions.
Inexperience with Perforce.
WHAT WE LEARNED
The importance of spending more time on figuring out the core of the game and getting the fundamentals down before attempting to add features.
Efficiently using time to get things to a workable state, then use time later to polish.
The necessity of scheduled group discussions to discuss game health and game direction as a means to not waste time and assets.
Making tasks for scrum boards more granular for increased transparency.
Value of playtests and asking the right questions to playtesters.
