Attack from the deep water
The Game
Attack from the Deep Water is a boat game where you have to maneuver your boat between deadly rocks to escape a monstrous sea abomination. This game was created during the 2017 Global Game Jam in 48 hours.
Team
- François Boivin: Game & level designer.
- Assaf Horovitz: Game design.
- François Rivoire: Programmer.
- Tristan Pradens: Programmer.
- Victor Mellini :Artist and Sound designer.
Context
Attack From the Deep Water is a game created during the 2017 Global Game Jam. I was studying in Germany at that time and me and some of my classmates participated in an exchange with the ENJMIN (École Nationale du Jeu et des Médias Numériques) in Anouglême, France. So, I was again in a foreign country and had to work with people I was meeting for the first time. The theme of that year edition was Wave.
Game design
My first idea was to create a mix between a horror game and and a boat game. The player would be on a ship and have to get back to the shore at darkness. There is a monster waiting to ambush him. The monster is not visible in the dark but a lighthouse on the shore emits a beam of light at regular intervals that makes the monster visible for a short period of time. The player would have to select his path in a way that he can avoid getting face to face with the monster. Getting hit by the monster would result in an instant loss.
Level DEsign
When I started to create the outline of the level, I wanted to create moments of panic where the player would have to dodge the monster at the last second and continue on his way. In that case, hitting a rock would not have meant the instant death of the player, but could slow him enough so that monster would catch him. The implications were:
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At each point of encounter, there should at least be one path of escape, so that the player never reach a dead end if he me
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The escape path had to be reachable without having to go backwards.
With these ground rules set up, I started to define my metrics and identify the parameters that I would use to create a difficulty progression. The parameters were:
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The number of escape paths at each encounter point.
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The distance between each of the rocks.
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The number of obstacles.
You can see the difficulty progression in the second picture. The space between each of the obstacles is narrower which require more skills from the player to navigate between the rocks and avoid the monster.
Legend
Obstacles
Escape path
In the future
Once we started to play the game, I realized that the game was not behaving how I thought it would. We didn’t manage to create an algorithm that would always place the monster in a good position so that the player would have to dodge the monster at the last minute. What turned out to be really fun was the chase itself. The boat controls felt really good and it was actually easy and enjoyable to navigate between the rocks. What was also great is that we realized that when the player was trying to escape the monster in the rocks, there was a possibility that the monster would get stuck in tight places. So, if I could redo this game in the future, I would like to design the game around this idea. Providing better places and opportunities for the player to escape the monster by luring him in a position where he can get stuck in the environment.
