MASQUERADA: SONGS AND SHADOWS
ROLE
Game Designer and Level Designer
DESCRIPTION
Masquerada is a 2.5D isometric action RPG and is developed by an indie company. As part of a 2-man design team, I touched on almost all aspects of game design related to the game.
I scripted all the narrative events, cutscenes and combat encounters. This was done via trigger events that could play certain animations or dialogue depending on where the player was.
I also worked on the combat design, as it is heavily tied to my level design work. This includes placement and balancing of enemy units and their combinations in each fight. I also designed all the bosses and their mechanics as well as scripted their fights.
YEAR
2016
GENRE
Tactical RPG
PLATFORM
PC | PS4 | XBox One | Nintendo Switch
Tools & Engine
Unity | Photoshop
LEVEL & NARRATIVE DESIGN
I designed and implemented almost all the levels in the game. This was first done via mapping it out with white-boxes in 3D space. The artist will then take the isometric view of the 3D layout and draw our world in 2D. Once I receive the art assets, I import them into Unity and then proceed to piece together the level and finetune the navmesh.
This also involves using Photoshop to cut up the art assets so that they can be layered properly in-game. Some will have to be rendered in-front of the player, some behind, and some will need special treatment so the characters can go around them, emulating a 3D world space.
This is what makes the game 2.5D! Our characters are 3D, whereas our backgrounds are 2D. This poses some challenges as we have to be careful with navigation and layering of the environment.
I also scripted most of the narrative flow of the game. The narrative design is done hand-in-hand with the scriptwriter, where we will map out the flow and story beats, deciding where exciting combat should take place and where it's time for peaceful cutscenes.
I worked on implementing the dialogue, character placements, animations and NPC AI throughout the levels. Generally populating the world with friendly (and not) NPCs so it feels vibrant and alive.
