My Role
Games Designer
Flexible Team Member Who Helped Across All Specialisations
Design Documentation
Narrative - Produced narrative write-up
Script - Wrote narrative script for cutscene
Concept Art - Produced concept art for characters and cinematics
Marketing Material - Produced cutscene for showcase
UI Design - Designed and Created UI design and functionality for the game
Mechanic Design - Designed Mechanics based on narrative dynamics
Prototyping - Prototyped mechanics for programmers to expand on
Cinematic Creation - Created showcase art and sequence
Blueprinting - Helped with Unreal Blueprints when others struggled
About
Azalea's Torment
Azalea's Torment was a 7-month college project carried out by a team of games students in my class. The team consisted of myself and three male students. Throughout the 7 months, we moved from pre-production to pitching our idea, to our development before finishing with marketing materials, and finally our release showcase at Confetti's Celebrate event on July 11th, 2019.
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At the showcase, our game won 2019's Best FMP based on views from our tutors and members of the public.
Design
This design stage consisted of everything from designing all elements like the concept, story, mechanics, and visuals; to planning business-related elements like team roles, financial options, constraints, budget, and timescale. This section of production ended when we produced our pitch, which we recorded and edited to look as professional as possible.
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During the pre-production period, my roles were to produce concept art or other art-related elements needed for the documentation, as well as producing a lot of the writing in the documentation for our games throughout its concept, feasibility, and planning documents. These include writing the story, character summaries, mechanical summaries, level design description, compiling the budget, describing personnel, and explaining regulatory and legal constraints. I finished off my roles by also being the general editor for the documentation, ensuring all the spelling was correct and the information was accurate and precise.
Narrative Design
Here is a snippet of my written games design work for this project.
Backstory and Lore
Lore
The forest was once a lavish expanse for all people to live in – welcoming the humans when they arrived on its shores. The tree elves ensured their safe passage to the protected inner circle of the deciduous wilderness. The two races would live together – share resources, magnificent tales, and fall in love. You see, the tree elves have a way with the greenery; it listens to them. Many generations ago, their ancestors had formed a catalyst in the form of a great tree from the world around them; it would keep their land fertile and full of life. It ensured the soil sprouted many herbal plants that could not only be eaten but also cure many of the diseases found within this existence.
They were also generous enough to provide medical services to the humans that came to them in need – saving the lives of the wounded or sick. The humans were the warriors; they would protect the tree elves and their passive nature with the skills they brought from their own land; with only a few tree elves being trained for battle. They would provide the elves with food like meats and fish from the surrounding oceans – trekking through the dangerous borderlands to reach the shores. The two lived to help each other... Until humans became selfish. After a deadly winter and their lands becoming infertile, they looked to the elves for help. The elves, being as gracious as they were, offered refuge to the humans while they worked to build a catalyst for their land also. This process would take a long time, and the humans were not sitting well with this idea. But the humans saw the prowess of the elven land and became entranced with the power of the already birthed catalyst. They were always too violent to understand the passive lifestyle of the elves; often causing discord and chaos at the expense of their hosts – power driving their action. They wanted it for themselves – so they stole the tree and took it to a new land that the elves could never enter. It was a land lifted from the soil by the hands of the gods – the humans thought it was placed there for them to live once they had risen (quite literally) above the elves.
The life on the island thrived with the relocation of the tree; with the humans living in luxury while the forest began to become overgrown by the evil wrath of time – creatures from the borderlands adventuring out and endangering the elves. The elves could never contain this but refused to leave the land they worshipped. The stories of why the humans left the elves with nothing changed with every leader of humanity – with fewer people wanting to leave the place after stories of violent and ruthless creatures that hunt you down for entering their sacred land. They tell that the tree was their superior power; the reasoning the humans have taken it to be used for supposed good. The tree still stands on the island but will never be the same without the care of the elves. Little know the truth – those that did die many years ago from age or by the sword of another.
The Final Game
After reviewing our game build during Celebrate, we found a few extra small bugs that we wanted to iron out. After I had fixed these, we uploaded it to itch.io a developing game-sharing platform that allows for the distribution of indie game files and information. The button below will take you to the webpage where you can view and download the file.
Character Development
Characters
Playable Character
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Name: Azalea
Age range during game: 18 onwards
Gender: Female
Species and Home Planet: Half Human/Half Tree Elf
Species information: A half-breed gets its powers on its 18th birthday – they are often more powerful than a full breed tree elf.
Physical Description
Appearance: Blonde hair in a bun atop her head, with a ring of braids around the sides.
Peach skin. A crafted bark mask that sprouts from around the ears to cover most of her face.
Dress: First Act: Torn ball gown.
Second Act: Plain cotton shirt, blue baggy bottoms, brown and green cloak, small brown shoes.
Other information
Profession: Princess and outcast.
