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2D ACTION
ADVENTURE METRIODVENIA
After the tragic death of his beloved, Rhu finds himself in the land of dead. Later he finds that his beloved is stuck in this afterworld as she is been blamed by Rhu for leaving him alone with all the suffring. The only thing that can save Meerah and give her salvation is his blessing.
You play as Rhu who finds himself in a beautiful but dangerous place where everyone is trying to kill you as you are not one of them. You make your way through the world of dead by fighting the gods of the sins and save your wife.
Rhu is a metroidvania which is highly based on action, platforming and backtracking.
Game Designer, Project Manager, Narrative Designer, Level Designer, Music Composer
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Designed game mechanics and documented for the artists and programmers
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Designed levels on paper and build engine
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Tweaked the matrices of platforming
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Tested and Quality assured of the level of design
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Created and handcrafted every level in unity with handcrafted paralx effect.
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Created VFX and particle effects for the all the objects in the game
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Designed the boss encounters and narrative beats
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Distributed tasks to the team and made sure the deadlines were met
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Composed music and recorded dialoges for the game
ROLE
SOFTWARE
USED
IN
PRODUCTION
Unity 2D
Blender
Photoshop
Premier
FL Studio
Miro
Trello
GAME DESIGN
I took inspiration from Ori and the Blind forest and Dead Cells for this game. This was the first time I ever came across the term Metriodvania. The game concept idea came up with me and my team mate's passion and that was music. We wanted to create something in which music had a big role mechanics wise and narrative wise. I went with many iterations and researched many music based game but the most difficult part was to create something related to music but in an action genre.
I came up with the game concept while watching 'THE GOLDEN COMPAS' one of my lovely childhood films and using the concept of souls I created this whole notion of being born in the world with a musical instrument as your soul and personality.
This gave us huge well of ideas of creating various mechanics.
For mechanics I took lot of inspiration from Ori and Dead Cells and basically converted some of the mechanics into the theme, For example the launch in ori became sonic rush in this game. The main character uses his flute to launch himself into the sky by blowing in it.
NARRATIVE DESIGN
The narrative was something which I was very keen about in this game, I decided to use the idea of myths and culture into the story. I took the concept of afterlife and the 7 deadly sins to create a narrative structure.
Taking inspiration from "Along with the Dead", A Korean fantasy movie I defined the basic moldboard of the game,
The narrative of the whole game was set with two words, "Forgiveness" and "Rescue". I made sure that player was reminded during the whole journey that the main theme was that. Using the sins of the narrative for boss and the world was then build up. I wanted to make the players feel like a intruder in another world and also wanted make them feel the consequences of their own act. Taking reference from "The Shadow of Colussis" I implemented the destruction of the afterlife while player is trying to rescuer his wife to make the player feel the burden of the destruction he had caused.
I designed a special language for this game as it was not based in humans but hominoid characters. Using special annunciation I created different way to say the alphabets and then used these to create words similar to magic, death and etc.
LEVEL DESIGN
For Level Design the biggest inspiration for me was God of War 2028, I had one pillar in my mind while designing my side of the levels that player could see everything in the level but its never easy to reach to that section.
I used various interconnected section to make it easier for the player to back track like how God of War does. It was difficult to reach a section in the game but very easy to traverse back as the player would get a new ability to move forward from there.
Visually the level was build up using the theme of sins, for example the level with the theme of jealousy and lust was made of spikes, this I wanted to use so that the audience could feel that pointed itch of jealousy.
The boss fight were mostly environmental fights, due to restriction of the tech I used basic triggering and animation for environmental boss fight with a physical boss in the level, for example the Lust boss would use her violin sound to drop spikes on the player.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
I made sure that the communication within the teams was always there, I always have this one goal where I would love my team members to learn something new after they have completed the projects, I pushed the members but in a very rewarding way by making a prototype on my own to show the vison, this helped me keep the team members motivated.
The deadlines were set and I gave enough freedom to the members to create the assets and finish the work but within time.
Sprits helped me tracking the task, and knowing all the technical and artistic limitation I found many ways to finish the game under those with good quality.
I decided to use only environment for boss fights as the animations were not available for us. Used modular assets and created handcrafted levels as creating background for each level was not a economical idea.
PROCESS
AND
SHOTS
TRAILER
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