Realmless
August 2 2020 - August 30 2020
This was a month-long project where I was given a theme to create a game around. The given theme was "Leaving It Behind".
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Figuring something out for this theme was quite a challenge for me. I originally had no idea or ideas that had already been done or overdone. At one point I ended up thinking back to the previous theme used for Death Switch about "Playing Both Sides" and ended up thinking back to the old Oddworld Inhabitants games and how Abe would possess other characters to get through the levels. In my mind, possessing another body was leaving behind your own body since you were now controlling a new player.
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Once I had the idea down, planning it out came a little easier. I took some inspiration from the Oddworld games but also tried to think of my own original obstacles. Unfortunately, majority of the obstacles I thought of weren't able to make it into the game because I had to spend so much time trying to figure out how to get my main mechanic to work in terms of possessing the other players. I am still so proud of what I was able to create, accomplish, and figure out in terms of the main mechanic and other mechanics I was able to use as placeholders to at least submit the project. This is definitely a project I dream of being able to finish up, polish, and publish as an indie developer. I think one day it could hopefully be even half as big or popular as the Oddworld games are.
Realmless Game Design Document with Playtests
Here you will see the Game Design Document with recorded playtests for Realmless throughout the time of its creation.
Realmless Pitch - First Pass
Realmless Pitch - Second Pass
Realmless Pitch - Final Pass
Skills Used
Unreal Engine
Blueprint Scripting
Block-Out
Level Design
Playtesting
Game Design
Game Design Documenting
Postmortem
Q: What challenges did you overcome?
A: The biggest challenge in creating this game was figuring out how to let my character "possess" other characters in order to save the prisoners. After some research and plenty of trial and error I managed to figure out how to make the mechanic work. It made me really happy to figure it out, however, due to the amount of time it took to figure it out, I lost out on time I needed to create majority of the rest of the obstacles and everything for the game.
Q: What challenges did you fail to overcome? How did this affect your project?
A: Overall, I was a little too ambitious with this project. What I had planned and imagined making this game into, was definitely out of scope of the timeline I was given. However, this is another project I plan to eventually go back and continue working on and potentially publish in the future.
Q: What is something related to the project in terms of progress or productivity that you were extremely pleased with?
A: Something I was pleased with in terms of progress was when I figured out how to blueprint/script the mechanic to possess the other players of the game. I also was pleased when I was able to figure out how to make the Realm Piece look how I wanted it to and the animation, small as that may seem, it felt like a big accomplishment to me actually watching my vision come to life.
Q: What is something related to the project that you feel could have gone better?
A: I could have planned my time a little bit better maybe or not planned such a big layout for the level that I could've potentially had more of the project done and actually looking and functioning how I wanted it to.
Q: What is something related to the project overall that you feel went well?
A: Overall I still feel accomplished about how the project turned out. Do I wish it turned out better? Of course. But am I still proud of what I did manage to create? Most definitely. This is something I plan to turn into one of my life's work projects. I want it to be big and I want it to get attention and I won't stop until I publish it.
