Condensed review of my work as Game Design Intern at Sushee, Brittany.
Working mostly on the new opus of Fear Effect franchise.
The Beginnning
During a well-known french festival in Rennes, the Stunfest, I came across a nice bunch of bearded guys, with piercing eyes and jolly faces, standing behind dark PC monitors. On them, a game called Goetia, still in development at the time. This demo instantaneously brought me in their dark and mysterious universe. That day, I remember saying : « God, I’d love to be in this studio to make this game ».
Well, I did … but not to create this game, actually.
My work on Fear Effect Sedna
Game Design Document Creation
This game was my first real attempt at creating extensive documentation of a project all by myself. Everything was done using Google Services such as Slides, Docs and Sheets which I love to use to team work on documents. Suggestions can be added by any of the contributors and it’s available anytime, anywhere.
Time was sometimes against us so most of my work was not reviewed by the Creative Director, having to deal with the creation of all the levels’ 2D elements and as explained in the last paragraph of this post, this was an issue in the end. Even when not validated, important points of gameplay was redrawn and explained on whiteboard for programmers to code. Having no access to those documents anymore, I won’t be able to show any of these.
Level Design
To help speeding up the workflow, I decided to make first drafts of the levels we could then discuss about and modify to fit the tension needs and the character’s abilities.
Each level was placed in a chapter corresponding to the big parts of the game narrative. In total, the number of levels was around 20 scattered in 6 differents chapters with specific ambiance and characters to play with.
Some of the levels were designed with basic white board action, validated then drawn inside Paint.NET for fast and clean results. Of course by the time they get to the game, they evolved thanks to playtesting. Others were too complex to apprehend on paper so we had to go on Blender and build it in 3D to see the level clearly and choose which camera angle we wanted to have for each part of the level.
Puzzle Design
Prototyping and designing puzzles was a great deal of fun during this internship. I could do any type of puzzles I wanted since we had to find different ideas from the previous games and from already overused puzzle mechanics.
Puzzles could be both localized, like a lock, or be the level in itself. Creating a maze for the player to get lost into while gathering evidence and info about the story.
In the end, I deisgned 20-ish puzzles with only 5 complete and ready to playtest in both Unity or Construct2. Two of the levels I designed were mazes with some fighting action and exploration-oriented levels.
Kickstarter
Being part of the rebirth of an old franchise is a very disturbing experience. First, you have to deal with the community already built-up around this series. Then, you have to create something new and fresh with old material.
During my first month at Sushee, the team was asked by Square Enix to start a campaign over Kickstarter to probe the community and see if investment was a good choice. Turned out we managed to get fully backed with a short extra 7.000€. Many things had to be done during this period and the whole team engaged in a rush to create some convincing trailer & demo, we could show off and share with backers in due time.
This experience was extremely enriching in terms of task managing. Things had to be done quickly and deadlines respected. I learnt a lot about deciding what’s of essence and what can be discarded as soon as possible.
Trailers Creation
This 3-minute long gameplay trailer was made in After Effect with footage from early prototype of the game.
I made this easy on the team since I was the only one able to use a video editing software. Once the script was decided, it was only a question of stitching all together and add some post-process like various sounds effects (not in the prototype at the time) or transitions between screens of the demo.
This second trailer was made to introduce new mechanics and some narrative aspects of the game. Our newly announced producer Forever Entertainment was keen on spreading some more recent footage of the game. Music is courtesy of Matt Furniss, the original sound designer behind the first opus of the series.
Other Projects & Prototypes
Rhythm-Based Infinite Runner
This project was a service project for a French company willing to publicize a newly created music streaming service.
The idea was to get tracks from a server and create (or at least modify) the Level Design according to the song’s beat, pace and mood.
3 songs were chosen at the beginning of the level with rising tempo but same mood or genre.
Characters with special powers could be chosen, enabling various ways to cross the level.
It was made in Construct2 for the prototyping, then in Unity 3D for a more complete version.
Educational Game with Lessons and Artistic Activities
This prototype was a very simple situation mock-up to see your Character moving and interacting with the scenery. Each interactive item would trigger an icon the player could tap on.
Doing activities would spend energy while learning new things would give you extra energy. Once the Character was too tired, the player had to send it to bed, locking the avatar for 5 hours.
It was aimed at children from 5 to 10, and available on Tablet and PC.
In The End
This intership was a real tough but enjoyable experience for me.
I had the possibility to work with a team full of dynamism and creative people. Sometimes, I had to struggle to get some feedback and critic of my work from my tutors, if they reviewed my work at all but this was part of the game. The team being small and everybody having to deal with multiple things, time was flying for everybody and having decidors to gather around a table to talk about game mechanics was really tricky for me as an intern.
Both my tutor and I were convinced I was not made for this studio in the end. Struggling to find my place between the hierarchy and the artistic team members.
These 6 months were really really packed with emotions and various projects so I didn’t had time to get bored at all. Prototyping and writing documents all the time confirmed my thought that this is clearly the first that I like the most.
