Dark Acropolis (Level Design, Writing)
Dark Acropolis is a Horror stealth game where you must destroy an evil monster to take back a noble’s castle. You do this by dispelling magic runes placed around the castle to make the monster’s weak point vulnerable (the weak point is a giant heart stored in the castle’s dungeon). If the player is caught, they can temporarily stun the monster using a flash from their magical gauntlet (which is limited). In previous concepts of the game, we wanted the player to also face the witch who created the monster. But ultimately this would have made the development time go way past the deadline, so it was scrapped.
Level Design
Sketch 1
Sketch 2
The first renditions of my castle layout Focused on one or two hallways that were connected to most of the level’s rooms. I wanted the player to be free to explore, but also have ways to evade the monster. Although feedback from other members suggested that a layout like this could be confusing for the player to navigate because of its size and lack of memorable locals in the hallway. Size would’ve been an easy element to fix but making sure the player knew where they were going would have been difficult. So newer iterations were built differently.
Final Layout
Rather than lining rooms using one hallway, the new layout has each room linked directly to each other, except for three small hallways. This makes it easier for the player to remember where they are. Though I feel the design made it a bit harder for the player to escape the monster, player and monster speed can compensate at least a little for this.
Writing
I was given the minor, but neither the less important task of writing the opening and ending letters of the game. Up until this point, there wasn’t much discussion of the game’s story, so I just did what I thought would be appropriate for the game. I was also shortly after given the task to create a third note, which would give a few quick tips on how to play/win the game.
Beginning Draft
Ending Draft
The basic plot has the player being contacted by a noble who had his castle attacked by a witch and her monster. The noble’s guards and family were killed in the attack. He then calls upon the player to retake the castle and avenge his family. The first versions of the notes where a bit rough. I wanted the noble to sound sophisticated, but a fair amount of the text was too wordy, which was especially hard to read due to the font. I had to scale it back so the player can more easily read it.
Final version of the first note
Though I made a new version of the first note it was ultimately replaced with a new one that combined both the plot and tutorial into one note due to time constraints. I didn’t have much to do with this final iteration.