Connect:
Stephan Haldaman
  • Portfolio
  • Resume
  • Contact & Bio

Heart of Clay

DOWNLOAD HERE

Project Info
For: DigiPen
Date: April 2015
Team Size: Solo
Role: Creator
Engine: DigiPen Zero Engine
Project Summary​

Development Process​​
  • Pre-production
The requirements for this project were to make a 2D game based on "discovery," and what I started with as inspiration was mainly old Newgrounds games from the 90's which were inspired by even older adventure games. I started with the idea that the player would find items in the world and give them to specific NPCs or use them on objects to get new items to progress a narrative.
The chart below is the very first thing I worked on. It helped with several huge elements of the game, such as deciding the scope of the entire project, realizing the narrative more clearly, deciding the layout of the town and so on! It got somewhat complicated looking but I'm glad to say that no cuts were necessary after this chart was built.
Building this chart, I really, really wanted every item to have a very understandable purpose. Some games will get pretty complicated with the amount of items they have and I feel like some of them stop trying to combine them with the narrative to the point where you have the adventurer looking for bananas to feed to an alligator, but I REALLY wanted every item to make sense, both physically and within the narrative, so I thought about this chart long and hard.
Picture
Click to expand image.
  • Development & World Design
The most important things for prototyping were getting the movement mechanics smoothly working.
Picture
© Stephan Haldaman
All content and trademarks property of their respective owners.