ABOUT IRON HEART

A Heart Forged in the Flames of War

Game Info

Genre: 3D, Action RPG, Soulslike, Steampunk, Victorian
Team: 1 Designer, 3 Artists, 4 Programmers
Tools: Unreal Engine 5, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Audacity, Google Docs, Slides and Sheets

Game Description

Iron Heart is a Soulslike Action RPG in a Steampunk and Victorian themed world. Experience playing as humanity's first cyborg soldier in a world infested with weaponized robots called Meks, that has gone mad under the influence of the Iron Heart. Fight and explore through the grim landscape of the city of Victoria at war as you need to find and destroy their Iron Hearts.

About this Game's Concept

This game was made as my final year project where we had complete freedom to make whatever game we want. I chose a souls-like game as it is one of my favorite genre and something I hope to make as a full commercial game in the future. The idea of this game as the initial concept was to make a demo or a prototype of what could potentially be a AAA souls game, so the idea was to make the experience short but also cinematic and fun yet challenging to play. Lies of P was a huge inspiration for this project.

Deeper Look on the Game Design

One of the core experience and gameplay concept I design for this game was to enhance and make sure that the player feel that they are actually fighting a robot. As many souls game use beast and monsters that have a conventional HP and need to deplete it to defeat it. To give the game a unique twist, I designed the enemies to only have a stagger bar and to defeat it, they must staggered the robot so that it will reveal its heart and only then they can be destroyed as an automaton unlike things that are alive is that robots will never get tired and will keep doing what it supposed to do unless its core component is damaged.

The focus in the combat gameplay experience and design was to have that feeling of impact and grit in their attacks and when they get hit. We try to achieve this with myriad of stuff just to make the combat and the player hits to actually give out that feel of contact such as hitstop, hit vfx, sound effects, animation and camera shake, all of this to make sure player feel satisfied when hitting the enemy, especially during a parry.

One of the common criticism we had in our early playtests was that the combat felt lacking with only one weapon and that usual grind of managing stamina while fighting enemies needed more. I came up with the Overheat system to help solve this problem as player gain a huge boost in attack and attack speed but still remain vulnerable if they play too recklessly.

I designed the enemies to be reactive to the player's action so that each player can have different experience in fighting the boss based on their unique gameplay choices. The design philosophy of the boss was to really make sure that challenge came through in the form of the boss actions, attacks and behavior as that is main part I love about souls-like game that the challenging bosses are tough but fair. Therefore, the design of creating these challenging bosses was to make it attacks feel very powerful and intimidating but there is always a way for player to defeat, or outsmart it base on their gameplay choices and not stats, buffs or singular factor.

In reference to enemies' AI, I created flowcharts for all of them as this was the most effective way that both programmers and designers could understand the AI, especially as the bosses behavior were coded using state machine.

One of the many flowcharts designed for the bosses per phase

This game was creative vision and direction so I had to work closely with both the programmers and artists in almost every aspect of the game such as the way the attack collision is made to how the city and map structure looks like. I worked closely with the whole team to ensure that the game follows the experience we wanted and intended.

I also created all the game cutscenes myself in the engine but also had the artist assist me in making storyboards and concepting on the events of the cutscene, followed by editing based on team feedback once it was done. I assisted the programmers in optimizing the game as our game is relatively large but we learned and applied things such as level streaming, ambient occlusion, LOD and virtual texture to optimize the texture streaming. In regards to the optimization process, I took lead but everybody had to optimized the game in some way to improve performance which was a novel experience for us as it was something we all had to self-learn from scratch.

Video of the ending cutscene while still in production

- Reflection -

Ultimately, I think the end product of the game is well done for what we had envision as the experience of combat does feel, to me at least, to have that impact and grit which of course could be improved but I am still satisfied with the end result. The cinematics feel engaging and the world reflects the creative and narrative direction I had intended. We were able to create a combat experience that felt challenging but motivating and engaging to beat and a gameplay design that was both unique and interesting to players. I really proud of the overall gameplay and immersive experience in the final game as it was what we had imagined for the game to look and feel whether through the game world, art or gameplay.

Though while that are some aspect of the design I think can improved, particularly the Iron Heart system where enemies need to fill up their stagger bar and only then can player stab the heart. I think this aspect can become too mechanical and dampen the combat experience as it does not feel rewarding enough in terms of gameplay. I think the design can be improve to be more dynamic and with more flair is to have certain points or under certain requirements such as when the stagger reach a certain percent, or player have parried a certain amount against this enemy to have the enemy not quite stagger but have their Iron Heart revealed but the enemy is still attacking. In which case, if player could find an opening in that attack, they could use their charged attack on the heart and directly destroy the heart without fully staggering and start the next phase immediately while rewarding them with some stun time in the enemy. With that, I think the combat could be immersive as a fight and add some dynamics to the core loop to prevent it from feeling too grindy or mechanical.