ABOUT SYNTHETIC SHADOWS
Fight in the Shadow to Bring Light to the World
Game Info
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Genre: 3D, Stealth, Third-Person, Real-Time-Strategy, Point-And-Tap
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Team: 3 Designers, 2 Artist, 3 Programmers
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Tools: Unity, Google Docs and Sheet, Adobe Photoshop
Game Description
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Set in cyberpunk themed world, play as the partner of the hitman as you hacked into the CCTVs to guide the hitman to take down overwhelming reign of AI and the corporation that runs it.
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This game focus on using lights as a core mechanic by turning them on and off to allow players to sneak and to distract and assassinate enemies and remove obstacles by using strategic tactical thinking in order to reach your goal.
About This Game's Concept
This game was made as part of the Game Project Studio 2 where we needed to create a 3D Mobile game in Unity and we had to do it with set choices of themes which for this project we chose Science Fiction and Lighting.
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Eventually, we settled that we wanted to do a Stealth RTS game where players could point and tap where to go to ambush enemies and infiltrate the place. We used John Wick Hex, XCOM 2 and the original Metal Gear Solid as our point of references.
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I wanted to create a gameplay experience where player have to care about each action and watch their surroundings using what the level provide to accomplish what they do as well as having different routes to the end goal so that player will always multiple choice of gameplay to reach their goal.
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While developing the levels, I ideated a way to make the experience more immersive by switching the player's POV from a generic third person camera to a CCTV style where in the true player is the hacker assistant to the hitman and you have to guide him what to do as you have a better view of the whole environment and have to tap the screen to guide what the hitman should do.
Game Level Design
Level 1 was the introductory and sort of tutorial level of the game so the design for this is pretty one path to ensure that player will get to try out the basic mechanics of the game.
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The level pathing for this level guides to avoid the first enemy and then using the switch to turn the lights off to distract the second enemy and then using the bomb to ambush the third enemy. In this case, the solution is designed to be one way so that player will have experience in trying out the core mechanics of the game. The dark area allow player to either use the dark area as their advantage as the robot cannot detect them in the dark but at the same time, traps such as landmines will be hidden as well. Otherwise, player can also use the drone item to light up the place to see the trap and avoid the enemy normally.
Level 1
Level Key
Level 2 might seem complicated and large at first but for the player experience is not really as the player do not have to go through the whole level to reach the goal as this level to meant to have branching path at certain points so that player can strategize a particular path that fit best with their current situation and strategy, and the level is large as to interconnect between each point to allow players constantly having to make interesting gameplay choices.
Level 2
Level 3 was meant to be hardest of the 3 and focus deeply on player using the lights to their advantages whether it was distract enemies to clear a path or use it hide in and then ambush the enemy through bombs or gun if they have bullets. There is shortcut that player could take to the goal but requires for them to look for the key hidden in the level, otherwise they could take the long way, rewarding the players who are more observant and those who like more of challenge and outsmart the enemy directly.
Reflection
While I think the main concept and level design idea in this game has high potential to be very fun and amusing gameplay experience, I definitely missed out on certain elements required to make those idea and feature work, such as as we reused the environment asset and did not have a very distinctive world design in the space, the CCTV style camera made it hard for players to tell where they were or suppose to go as most of the level looked the same and the CCTV could only worked if there distinctive landmark to tell where the CCTV was in the space.
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Also the game needed a map or at least some sort of indicator to tell where the goal was as without it, player couldn't really strategize or plan out their route to reach their goal and most of time, they had to go in blindly and adapt. Another way to help this would have been to allow player to freely switch view in the CCTV so they can freely scout the area before guiding the hitman as the CCTV view only switch once the hitman moved to a certain area, this way player would be able strategize more clearly and the core experience would have been stronger.