[2023]
"Arin: Illumination of Shadows" is a 3D, Zelda-like adventure game with some puzzle on platforming elements. Follow Arin on their path to become one of the greatest appolian of all times. Find treasures, fight enemies, solve puzzles, and discover secrets along the way.
You can play the game here!
This prototype was developed in our 6th semester, over the course of four months by five students.
MAIN TASKS:
- Level design and player guidance
- Modeling and texturing of the environment
- Modeling and texturing of the props
SOFTWARE:
Blender, ZBrush, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Unity
THE TEAM:
Shaina Milde
ASSETS
Bark done in Substance Designer; Leaves sculpted and baked onto a plane, textured in Substance Designer
Materials for tunnel / castle assets, done in Substance Designer
Materials for terrain, done in Substance Designer
Eye animation done with blend shapes
LEVEL DESIGN
Levelsketch
We started out by drawing the map in Miro. Since the prototype is supposed to be the tutorial of the game, we divided the map into sections and decided what the player will learn in each of the sections. (e.g.: movement, jumping, dodging, ...) After the inital sketch was done, we started to build the blockout in Unity.
The intial blockout was to test out the size of the map as well as figuring out if the paths the player has to walk were too long or too short.
I uploaded the pictures of the first blockout to Miro, so my team members could write down ideas and improvements. Overall, we were not happy with the shape - it was too straight and left the player with no opportunity to explore. Based on this feedback, I started the work on the second blockout.
For the second blockout, we started using placeholder assets to get a more appropriate feeling of our atmosphere. At this stage, we were already able to playtest and use the feedback to improve the level and the player guidance.
Based on this feedback, we also decided to add more sections to give the player the opportunity to solidify the mechanics they have already learned as well as giving them a breather from constantly learning new mechanics.
Because our scene is quite dark, we used glowing mushrooms and subtle point lights at entrances to help guide the player through the forest.