An isometric, adventure game taking place in a dystopian City Pop setting. Battle through enemies, and enjoy the city life. Travel into the unknown, will you be about it?
For my senior capstone project at Santa Monica's IxD program we had an open prompt. I decided with self-exploration into gave development. 16 weeks to conceptualize and develop a working prototype of City Screamer and present online and during our grad show where people would walk around and try out my game
Project Manager | Artist | Writer | Developer
Godot | Mixamo | Blender | Google Workspace | Notion
16 Weeks
Gastro City - Night Time
I have always loved and enjoyed playing video games since I was a little kid. As an Interaction Designer, I knew that I wanted to dive in game development and become a better designer. This project is an amalgamation of personal interest and my professional goals.
This is my first time diving into game development and I had to flex my skill set and learn new tools. That means being a project manager, artist, writer, and developer. Which I have done before but never all at the same time for 16 weeks.
By far the biggest challenge I faced was learning a new game engine, Godot. I threw myself into tutorials and documentation to have a better understanding, the second challenge was learning how to code in GD Script.
The third challenge was time management and setting realistic expectation. What I could accomplish and what I would be okay with my the end of the 16 weeks.
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Game Inspiration Board
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There had to be a focus for the game in terms of game play and direction as you can't design a game for everybody. There was a direction for both gameplay and aesthetic when honing in.
Breaking down the aesthetic of City Pop, a genre that became popular in Japan that is heavily influenced by Western occidental culture. The goal was to have a clear direction for level designing in terms of aesthetic
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Setting Inspiration Board
Godot
Exploring different game engines I ultimately decided to go with Godot for being user-friendly and being open source. There was a lot of documentation and tutorials but quickly found out that the engine got severely overhauled several times after each version. That meant that meant that tutorials got dated quickly and documentation. I had to make changes on my researching which became limited but still was easy to learn and pick up Godot.
For managing my assets and documentation I used google workspace. It became my hub for setting up tasks and keeping track what I did on a weekly basis.
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City Screamer - Notion
I made a notion as a design concept and pitch document for a quick and summarized version of City Screamer. Updated after each big milestone, like visual guides or story updates. While it might be redundant it gives way to give different versions of detail of City Screamer.
Github to save and update my Godot Project. It's a godsend because anytime I broke anything that I coudn't quickly fix I'm able to revert back to the previous version. Also it made documentation easy because anytime I pushed an update with my progress I'm able to summarize what I did.
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City Screamer - Github
City Screamer Timeline
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Protagonist Mike Bennet and Deuteragonist Abigail Hart are detective in Gastro City. Navigating through the crime ridden city. Their goal is solve crimes by finding clues through each level and fighting enemies. They're a homage to 80s anime and crime fiction akin to Twin Peaks where the plot thickens after each episode.
Mike Bennet & Abigail Hart
The world of City Screamer is an otherworldly Earth where technology developed ever so differently. The Hub and main focus will be in Gastro City. The other locations will be locations that are homages to older games and animes that the main characters will have to go to get to the bottom of their journey. The world is set so that magic and other fictions are still possible
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City Screamer World
Godot Prototype
learning Godot was a challenging experience within 16 weeks. It was a big task that If I had to do it again, I probably wouldn't have gone the 3D route because of the extra elements that have to be accounted for. I had somewhat basic understanding of coding but only in HTML/CSS. Learning GD Scripts was definitely a unique experience along with the node system that Godot uses. Animations was whole new work flow that I had learn using Mixamo, Blender, and Godot to make the player model responsive. Along with building a character I had to learn to set up a 3D scene and customize it to the aesthetic of City-pop. I was definitely in a limbo with tutorials and documentation but it became easier to incorporate them into the ways I envision my game.
Given the format for my online presentation to industry professionals. I had to condense my work into a 5-7 minute presentation. A lot of the feedback that I had from pervious reviews was that it was too much on the technical side and not hitting on other elements like the storytelling. I do feel like I should have flipped it for this presentation as I should have been able to talk more about the technical issues I faced like setting up the animations and blending them in for movement and making it responsive as its current state.
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City Screamer Deck
Grad Show Set-up
This was my first grad show presentation with a section to have family, friends, staff, past alumni, and event goers walk around and test out my prototype. Because of the current state of my game, I felt best to make a jumping puzzle where people would have to get to the top of a building. I created two paths, an easy path that would utilize walking and jumping and a harder path that would utilize jumping, running, sprinting and smaller platforms so that your jumps had to be more times. People that took several attempts at the game started to realize shortcuts that weren't intentional and provided well needed feedback. For the set up of my presentation I printed my concept art and placed it around on the background along with LED lights around it. I definitely had little room to breath as folks were talking to me and I had to give instructions on how to play the game. It was a great experience.
This was the start of the journey of what I want to do professionally for the time being. I learned so much and was able to test myself and put myself out there and really give it my all. I know I should have scoped down but the game but was just really dedicated to getting animation and movement down that it really absorbed 2-3 months of my project. If I had to start again I would make a 2D game so that I could explore more on game design rather than focusing on getting the player movement down and making it more engageful. For the time being I'm going to keep this project on the back burner and keep working on it.
Gastro City - Day Time