Unkindled

This is the main mechanic in the game. The idea of climbing walls like a spider was the idea that generated this game. The challenge was to make this mechanic fun and also, had some sort of condition/challenge to the player while using it in this case the player needs to avoid traps.

This interaction mechanic was a way I found to tell the story of the game and the skills the player has without pulling the player out from the game. This was a very fun and simple solution to the problem we had.

This simple mechanic of leaving the body behind for a certain period of time, to make “Death” more interesting to the player.

A simple and very useful mechanic of having breakable walls to surprise the player in various scenarios. In this case, the player is moving towards sentries that are about to shoot, but fortunately, the ground is unstable and the player fell into the underground part of the facility.

The drill mechanic is another way the player can interact with the breakable walls/ground. Also, it is a useful tool to use as a weapon against sentry enemies.

As the player is underground in an abandoned factory, it made sense to have some dark hallways for the player explore carefully. That is why it was implemented the flashlight mechanic to help the player see through dark areas.

The “fun” in this game is in the wall climbing mechanic. Since the beginning of the project, we as a team talked about how we would create a game around this one mechanic. And for the very first level, I decided to start with the player falling into a lower level to indicate that it was possible to climb back up. The first thing before falling the player sees is the end of the level door (another hint that eventually it was necessary to go back up). As the scenario was an abandoned facility having traps all around and some walls which had a different texture were very important as hints to the player to where to go. These walls symbolized the possibility to climb, and the very first time the player climbs is going down again after reaching a cliff. Again forcing the player to try interacting with it and them showing that skill the robot has without the necessity to have a tutorial or text.

Level 2 was different than level 1. As in level 1, the player learned the mechanics of the game I wanted them to use in different ways for the next level. This level is larger and has more traps than the first level. the player will have to climb walls and change direction way more often than before. I wanted to give something new to them. Where to open the last door it was necessary to destroy all the torrents. It made sense since again the torrents were the defense system of the facility and the door was protected by it. When the player interacted with the main engine it would tell what needed to be done to disable it, but not how to do it.

Here is an example of the main loop the player will experience.