Links
Engine: Unity
Programming Tools: MS Visual Studio, Cinemachine, Unity Timelines
Languages: C#
Role: Team Leader & Narrative Designer
Team size: 3
Development Time: 3 months
Genres: Story-Driven, Role-Playing, Boss Battle
Synopsis:
"Arthur: Ddraig's Legacy" is a game which focuses on a particular key moment in the story written for this project. The scene in question is at the end of Act 2, where Arthur and his ally knights enter the cavern which is home to the legendary sword, Caliburn, and its guardian, the white dragon Albion. The game uses light role-playing elements to deliver the core gameplay and cutscenes to explain the narrative.
The script document has since been used as a template for Kingston University students completing their Bachelor's in Computer Games Programming and Masters students in Game Development (Design) and Game Development (Programming).
Demonstrable Skills:
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Leadership:
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Maintained overall vision
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Assigned tasks & ensured they were completed to a high quality standard
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Maintained and organised all documentation including the Trello board
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Presented the game
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Maintained team morale
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Ensured all game components were coherent
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Narrative Designer:
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Drafted 5 unique stories with clear gameplay genres
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Completed full script for the scene prototyped
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Created complete storyline
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Created all cutscenes in prototype
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Decided which moment in the story to develop
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Skills Breakdown:
Leadership
Although this project was not meant to have a team leader per se, I became it once again since I had the clearest vision for the project. As the narrative designer, I created a total of 5 different possible stories to get feedback on, with each one possessing a different - but easy to understand - storyline. The decision was made to focus on an alternative take on the King Arthur legend by bringing in inspiration from the Welsh mythos.
With the narrative decided, I began creating our team's Trello board so that we can easily maintain documentation, see everyone's progress, and visualise tasks that needed to be done. We also discussed what everyone would take ownership of during the project, and update the board with any completed or in progress work that we had. Throughout the project, I would assign tasks and check-in with both teammates on how their work was going and, where appropriate, push for certain items to be completed as soon as possible. During the live presentation, I talked about the game whilst a teammate played it live over Teams.
Narrative Designer
As part of my duties, I completed an overall narrative and a script for the scene which my team and I would create. I made the case that we should focus on a 1-on-1 boss fight, similar to games like Dark Souls, so that our lead programmer only needed to focus on a couple of key elements. This also meant our environment & audio designer could create really engaging elements by only needing to focus on 2 scenes. The team agreed with the strategy and we pressed onwards with it. Once the written components were done, I focused on creating all of our cutscenes using Cinemachine and Unity's Timelines feature.
The game opens with a cutscene to set the tone and provide some exposition to bring the player up to speed with events. This transitions into the first gameplay segment within the cave where the player can gather items and familiarise themselves with controls. Further into the cave is a trigger zone that will activate the second cutscene before beginning the boss fight. Once the boss loses all its health, the final cutscene plays and closes out the game.
Although all other teams did a 3-piece structure for their projects (e.g., gameplay to cutscene to gameplay), we pushed ourselves and completed a 5-piece structure (cutscene-gameplay-cutscene-gameplay-cutscene) which we were very pleased with. Below, you can read the script and overall plot structure for the project that I completed (please excuse the randomly generated ID for each of the documents, I am unable to access these names to change them with the site provider at present!).
Please use the far-right scroller to see all the documents below!