PORTFOLIO

VASCO

After crashing on a floating island, an herbalist seeks to return home. To do this, he will have to study the local flora and use it to his advantage in order to make his way on this island, while facing the hostile natives of the place.

Game Genre: Exploration, Survival

Number of players: Solo game

Public : Occasional survival player

Support: PC

Engine: Unity

Game Design

Vasco is a first-person game. You play as an herbalist able to harvest and merge different resources that you can find on the island.

GDD link

The player is subject to a bar of hunger and thirst.

In order to eat, the player harvest several ingredient on the island and eat them.

In order to drink, the player needs to find a river or any water source. He can also harvest up to 3 water portions inside his watter bottle.

The player can also collect certain items that he uses to craft things:

- Ammo, that can be shoot either oblique or straight, which he uses to defend himself against monsters.

- Potions, which he uses to grow plants, which will help him move around the island (notably the "trampoplante" , which is a bouncing plant) .

Not all recipes are available directly, and the player will have to explore the island to find them.

Level Design

Reflexion

This game is a survival game where the player will have to constantly move in order to search for resources to advance.

In order to highlight this, we paid particular attention to the backtracking, verticality, and multipath present in the level.

To do this, we have implemented an iterative working method:

Concept and Diagram

Scott Rogers Waterfall Diagram

The waterfall diagram is a methodology that allows us to create a common thread and spread out the player's learning.

The waterfall diagram is not representative of the entire game level, given the non-linearity of the project.

The first combination (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) sets up the player's first learning, while the second (AE,AF,AEF) represents the combinations that can be used during encounters with opponents.

Intent workflow

Here are the key pieces of the intent workflow.

These are the key points that must be present for the implementation of the first combination of the cascade diagram and the progression implemented in the game.

This serves our backtracking and allows us to check if the player will search all the places made available to him, as well as avoid a possible soft lock .

Ingrédient

Distribution of ingredients

N - Normally accessible location. (eg: first part of the first island)

C - Location accessible with the use of the trampoplante. (eg: the second island).

Difficulty C: Common, harvestable without too much challenge

Difficulty R: Rare, at will to be difficult to access

This distribution is the one made before the plans, it was modified during pre-production and was modified during production, with a view to balancing.

Recipe

Here are the different recipes for the project:

Direct and oblique attack ammunition are the projectiles that the player uses to defeat his enemies.

Healing potions allow you to heal yourself.

The Trampoplante and Plonte (bridge plant across island) potion allow you to grow Trampoplantes and Plontes.

Distribution of ingredients by district

Distribution in pre-production:

Distribution in production:

We also thought about the polycount of each element for optimization purposes.

Theoretical number of possible crafts after a complete tour of the island

Thanks to this tool, and the playtest, we were able to test the distribution of our ingredients throughout production . This allowed us to ensure that the player has neither too much nor too little of them during his escapade on the floating island.

Gameplay element

Monstre

Opponent

Brutal : Opponent that dart on the player when he enters his line of sight.

Turret : It's a immobile opponent that shoot the player when he enters his line of sight.

The slingshot : It attacks the player from a distance by throwing rocks in an arc. He is able to attack the player over a wall. If the player is too close, he flees.

Trampoplante

The trampoplante allows the player to bounce on it and reach high areas that would otherwise be unreachable.

Mapping

If you want more details on the sub-districts, click here.

Playtest feedback

Playtest and feedback phase:

Effective solution:

Not enough trampoplante

Not enough ingredient, they are too small

Creation of a new district centered on the use of the trampoplante

Adding ingredients and rebalancing recipes, scaling ingredients

Simple trampoplante jump

Double trampoplante jump

Creation of a new district at the back of the island (Kevin Lynch methodology)

Line of sight and light work

In order to highlight the player's path , we did a lot of work on the orientation of the vegetation and the shadow areas in order to have control over the orientation of the player's gaze , to allow him to navigate more easily:

We chose to highlight the player's bag by using ingredients that contrast with the surrounding decor.

Line of force:

Light :