Realm of Atlas
Mercury Studios
Set up your arena and go to battle with the giant robot invading and destroying your home. Free the world from his evil before he converts the entire area to purple goop, ruining it forever.
Deep Dive
The Core Mechanic
Instead of the team forming around a pitch, we started by concepting a game together. We found common excitement for one big boss fight. The question then became, “With our limited scope, how do we keep up with the complex combat systems and enemy AI players are accustomed to?” Our answer to this question became our core mechanic - rather than relying on combat skill, challenge the player to design an environment that helps them defeat the boss.
Design Contributions
Game Loop
An important element of a boss fight game is the fail state. We had to decide if we were going to give players a fresh start on their level design after dying. I came up with the game loop for Realm of Atlas. The loop is fairly simple, but it offered a unique approach to players. We found it incredibly interesting that players could iterate on their own level design in our playtests, with different goals for each life. This allows them to use their health as resource. Adding collectibles or objectives to the player throughout the level would allow them to accomplish different things with each stage of the fight, and design their level at each stage accordingly.
Designing Level 2
I got the chance to design level 2 from the ground up. I felt that we had two main problems in level one. First, our level was far too small. After adding the dash, players could move around the level too quickly. Secondly, the first level offered the player too many choices that did not feel meaningful. There was nothing constricting the player’s movement or choices. To solve this I added chasms and bridges in level two, along with boss teleportation.
This creates different lanes in the level, each requiring resources from the player to navigate successfully. If the player spends all of their resources in the first planning phase to create a safe path to one boss location, it’s possible that the boss can move, leaving the player’s buildings less valuable.
One problem we found with this design choice was that player’s identified common chokepoints between lanes and spent all their resources there. Upon boss teleportation, players would retreat to their nearby safe haven, resulting in a very repetitive movement around the level. To solve this we added a knockback feature. When the player is damaging the boss, the boss can send them back to one of two starting locations. This forces the player to adjust their pathing and building as to not be exposed when knocked back to either starting point.
Environment Art
I took on responsibilities in the art team for this project. The majority of my contribution came in developing environment assets. Although this game was not centered around narrative, we wanted players to buy the motivation of our main character - defending the beauty around them. This meant we had to make the world around the player beautiful. We did this by placing the player in a mystical world up in the clouds. I used a vibrant color palate with dark purples around the boss to highlight his corruption. In the end, I think the environment is a highlight for the game.
