Project Overview
Magnus Venari is a puzzle RPG that was developed as my final capstone project for Full Sail University along with 3 other students. Different media influenced its creation such as games like The Legend Of Zelda, shows such as FullMetal Alchemist, and the concept of alchemy in general. The project took a total of 4 months and utilized all aspects of game design we had learned previously. I was given the task of lead level designer and programmer. I was also tasked with quality assurance towards the end of the project to make sure that each level was completable and able to be traversed by players in a coherent manner. As lead level designer I also overlooked the cohesiveness of levels making sure that each level had a good progression from introducing a mechanic, to practicing said mechanic, to finally mastering the mechanic.
Video and Screenshots
Role in Development
Prototyped and coded game mechanics along with back end mechanics including
Checkpoint/Respawn systems
Refined and programmed final systems in the game
Background game/state manager
Was in charge with debugging and finalizing background managers
Character and environment interactables
Objective systems
Puzzle interactions
Responsible for overlooking the design of levels including
Co-working on the main Hub area
Designing 1 entire level from the ground up including
Programming level functionality
Creating level layout and blockout
Refined level blockout to visuals seen in final project
Creating puzzles keeping with IPM (Introduce, Practice, Master) principles.
Co-designed 3 other levels with team mates
Reworked and consulted with teammates on the rest of the levels found in final project
Laying out design of main tutorial area
Making sure each level followed a pattern of introducing a new mechanic, practicing that mechanic, and then mastering it to complete the level.
Created a dev area to test new features
Created area for each team member to test their respective level features on
Created interactable obstacles and puzzles to test new features/iterate on existing features
Created areas responsible for testing bugs in interactables and character interaction
Quality assurance tested project including
Tested game from beginning to end for game breaking issues
Stress tested areas to prevent player sequence breaking
Implemented out of bound zones for unforeseen game breaking events
Kept development log of issues/concerns with each level
Addressed most programming/functionality issues in the levels
Balanced enemy and puzzle difficulty to fit a casual game style
Co-worked on reworking project midway through design
Rebalanced puzzles after projects shift away from action to more puzzle focused design
Post Mortem
I think the best moment that happened during the process of creating this project was, ironically, having to redesign the entire project halfway through creating it. It was a great teaching moment from a personal standpoint and also for the reality of wanting to work in the industry. Our original design had the game being an action puzzle rpg with the main focus on action and the puzzles being the main obstacles when enemies were not involved. It was designed in the style of Legend of Zelda where you combated enemies until you eventually faced a puzzle. This design worked until we took all the alpha level blockouts and realized that, honestly, the combat was not all that engaging.
Upon creating the original alpha for the game we noticed that the action in the game was not as interesting as we would have wanted it and that the puzzles were more interesting than the combat focused sections of the game. This meant scaling down much of the combat portions and therefore having to redesign some entire areas because they no longer worked without a focus on combat. It worked in the end because it made the designs have to be more inventive since we couldn’t just use the puzzles as a simple break from combat, but rather had to make multiple interesting puzzles per level that challenged the player in a different way each time.
On a personal level it was great being able to take on multiple lead roles while working with other designers who all wanted to make sure this was the best project we would deliver for our times as students. Communication skills were constantly tested and it was great being able to bounce off each other's skills to create a cohesive, large (for us as students) scaled project. It was an experience that we had had before, but on much smaller scales, and allowed for us to come out with a better view of the ins and outs of the industry. If there was only one thing I could say that I wish we could have done much better was investing more time in the games animations since as they are now, they are a bit simplistic because of all of our lack of skill in the area. Other than that tiny gripe, it was a great project to work on and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.