Game Designer
Son of a Witch
ROLE
Level Designer / Gameplay Programmer / Producer
DESCRIPTION
Son of a Witch is a 2D exploration game where the player restores order to the seasons. After his mother’s death, our protagonist must restore the seasons to normal and return the witch’s familiar to the spirit world.
Duration
September 2016 to April 2017
Engine
Custom Engine
PLATFORM
PC
Overview
Son of a Witch was my first two semester (8 month) long project. This was also my first project as a producer. Our team was named Against the Grain, and we had 11-12 members during our development cycle. Son of a Witch is a 2D adventure game made in a custom engine. As well as being the producer, I was also a gameplay programmer and level designer.
This game went through many different iterations: it was designed to be a farming game akin to the Harvest Moon franchise, it was briefly a Diner Dash-style potion-making game, and in the end it became an adventure game. This project may not be one of the favourites I’ve made, but it’s the project where I learnt the most about myself as a developer. I started this project as a tools programmer and finished it as a UX and level designer. Most importantly, I learnt about how to de-scope an over-scoped project and how to cut things that you love in a game.
Level Design
I was the original level designer for the Summer level of Son of a Witch. This was later taken over by Gregor Smith due to bugs. My original design of the level was to have the player knock down corn stacks with flowing water and scare away evil Cobgoblins with sunlight, but this scraped due to engine constraints. Here is the final layout of the Summer level.
The goal of the level is to make all of the water available for the small Cobgoblins by getting rid of the mean Cobgoblins hogging the water. The player has to traverse this maze and click on them to tell them to go away.
The Magic cards indicated magic that could be found in the level, but this mechanic was later scrapped. The same can be said for the seeds in the level as the farming was cut from the game.
User Experience
In the polishing phase of this project, I served as a UX designer to add more game feel to our game. I added text and particle effects to certain objects in the game when the player clicked on them, as well as text overlays for when the player enters new scenes. I also implemented the ‘How to Play’ and ‘Controls’ screens of this game using the custom text created by our art team.