Ignotus

Capstone student project. Use heat absorption abilities to manipulate their surroundings and solving puzzles to traverse the land.

Team Size: 5

Timeline: 8 months

Role

Major Roles:

Game Designer (Pitched general premise, Designed States for each interactable object, designed overall game-feel)

Level /Puzzle Designer (Designed level layout and geometry, Created and considered puzzle beats according to (Teach, Test, Challenge) Designed and tested Level flow and difficulty, Dressed Level and created world building and Environmental Storytelling)

Art Direction (Created world concept art, art direction, Considered the tone, mood, and ambiance of the level. designed and modeled the character and interactable objects, set up lighting and atmosphere, ensured artistic consistency, created game and studio logo design, designed mood boards)

Minor Roles:

Concept artist, Character Modeler, Logo Designer, General coding & bug fixing, QA and testing

Tools

Unity Engine
Photoshop
Notion
C#
Trello
Git
GitHub
Source Tree

Concept Art

Production

Rapid prototyping

At the start, production was comprised of rapid prototyping and ideation to nail down our core mechanics. We initially wanted to have multiple levels with with a central connecting hub world. We created mood boards for each level and had assigned and prototyped a Mechanic for them. Each level would feature a new form of energy transfer mechanic. However, we quickly reduced that concept to a single transfer type; Heat energy transfer.

This re-scope helped us focus on the gameplay feel and design of the mechanic and level. It allowed for much greater polish that would have otherwise been achievable.

Initial Mechanic Prototypes

Heat Transfer Prototype

Luminance Transfer Prototype

Luminance Transfer Prototype (cut)

Gravity Manipulation Prototype

Gravity Manipulation Prototype (cut)

Heat Transfer Prototype

1/4

Core Mechanic Iterations

Initial Prototype

A rapid prototype to explore potential mechanic

Proof of concept

basic concept of mechanics

Alpha Build

Finalized art and mechanics

Initial Prototype

A rapid prototype to explore potential mechanic

1/4

Core Challenges

A focus for our team was to follow our core pillars, making sure we achieved all of them through constant playtesting and focus groups.

Visually Unique Environments

Intuitive Character Controller

Engaging world Interactions

Level Design

One of the main challenges for the level, was to design a level that was intuitive for the player, but offered an opportunity for players to solve puzzles how they wanted. With multiple solutions to puzzles and with a few diverging paths to create some player agency

Alternate Paths

Golden Path

Alternate Path

Bread-crumbing

I wanted to use consistent design language to indicate where the player should look or go. To achieve this, we used yellow flowers along the ground to indicate the golden path.