here are a handful of gameplay prototypes I’ve made, either for a class, or just in general.
The Shift
this 3d stealth game was made in November 2016 for my class at DigiPen. The goal was to make something that delivered on a sense of fantasy. I ended up taking that prompt and going for a game where you shape-shift between a human and animal form (said animal being a cute cat)
so, my first objective was to focus on the shifting itself. the very act of changing from one state to another. in doing that, the player controller handing that is actually very in-depth. it treats the two states as a 0 and 1 between a floating point number, and based on the external stimuli around the player, that number shifts at a varying speed. once that number has passed a certain threshold, a certain body part shift. the player grows a muzzle, a tail, whiskers, becomes a quadruped, all sorts of stuff.
once that was done, the idea was for the player to escape a 3d environment with multiple ways to go, all without other people discovering you in a mid shift state.
the end product, sadly, I’d have to say is more interesting than it is fun. In my goal to create a 3d environment with multiple directions, I found thru playtesting that there was a perceived dominant path that players would find and take pretty quickly, leaving all the other pathways unexplored. And due to time restrictions, that was never fixed.
Additionally, while I ended up getting the shifting from one state to another down quite well, I both don’t feel I was able to give enough feedback to the player as to what was happening, and didn’t have much that could differentiate from one state to another in terms of abilities. as a human the player could open doors, something they couldn’t do as a cat, while a cat was small, and could fit in places a human couldn’t. the environmental factors I had planned ended up just boiling down to catnip trees and water, as two things that could affect the shift.
finally the difficulty curve for the games stealth was, in the end, a bell curve. once the player had fully shifted to a cat, there was little in stopping them from escape, and couldn’t even fail really, as the NPC’s would only freak out if you were mid shift, so either end, they wouldn’t notice.
Overall though, I liked making this project, but it was likely over-scoped, and I don’t think I fully succeeded at hitting all I tried. Still, I liked making it, and would love to take another crack at this idea in the future.
Here is a link to the project. Try it for Yourself!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vgkmg8e99pb842m/lozano_project3_Shift_executeable.zip?dl=0
Labyrinth
a 2D puzzle game I made for Digipen in my sophomore year. this was my first serious solo project at the school. it was made within the school in-house proprietary engine, Zero. the goal of project, was to make a game that delivered a sense of Accomplishment and Challenge.
the goal of the game is to get the ball from the start of the track, to the end, using the amount of blocks given to you per level.
for me, some of the best learning lessons I got out of making this, were many of what I consider the basics of game design. teaching the player the skill they need as the game progresses, good feedback on when the player takes any action, especially if its something you want them to do.
I also learned a lot useful stuff on the programing side too. DigiPen’s Zero engine is designed to make a wide variety of gameplay prototypes, but this one was not one of them. the interactive UI of picking up and placing a block was one of the more challenging things to get up and running, given how Zero engine handles its UI. In Zero, UI is in a different Space (think like Scene’s in Unity), and they don’t like interacting with one another. so getting the game to register placing down blocks, then having those blocks appear down in the game space was a challenge.
additionally, I also made the saved data system, and option menu for the project, as those are two other things that Zero doesn’t give you. those, along with the menu system (another thing you have to make yourself) formed the backbone of a shell system I ended up using for all my Zero Projects moving forward. for me, I also want to make things to be potentially reusable and generic first, unless it truly cannot be, for a programing perspective.
Here is a link to the project. Try it for Yourself! (if you get stuck, try Ctrl+Shift+J on the level select)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b2hfrwcbexundqe/lozano_project2_Labyrinth_Executable.exe?dl=0
Parastasis
this prototype was the, 3rd I think, attempt at trying to get this concept up off the ground (pun incidental). the idea was a hybrid platformer/flight sim, designed to truly give that sense of Superman Style flight. the idea being that you couldn’t truly appreciate the flight, or think that they are flying like superman, unless they can walk too.
all I ended up getting was a mechanical prototype in a test bed before I ended up moving onto other projects.
Here is a link to the Project. Try it for Yourself!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dlqlenbus8pjpmx/Parastasis_v2_Data.zip?dl=0
Jesse Lozano 