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Betrayal

"no time to waste"

  • Team Size: Individual

  • Role: Designer, Artist, Multidisciplinary Developer

  • Tools: Unreal Engine 4, Blueprints, Marketplace Assets, Photoshop, Google Docs, Illustrator, 3DS Max

  • Development Time: 6 months

  • Platform: PC (Gamepad controls are supported)

Overview:

Betrayal is a fast paced Third Person Shooter game where the main objective is to defeat the evil AI before you run out of time. The time mechanic plays a huge role in the game since it forces the player to quickly react and adapt to new environments creating a hardcore speed-run flow. AI driven enemies and increasingly challenging puzzles will be found in the levels. This is an interesting combination of features that in a fast paced game will deliver a unique gaming experience challenging the player to learn from their mistakes and try again.

Process:

  1. Brainstorm

  2. Research and Resource Finding

  3. Plan Elaboration

  4. Prototype Core Mechanics and Features

  5. Test and Iterate

  6. Design and Implement Enemies

  7. Level Design

  8. Polish, Test and Feedback

Design:

While designing Betrayal I had to set some goals I wanted to achieve in my mind that helped me drive my design decisions. After doing my research and finding the resources I needed to create the idea I had in mind I decided to set the following goals:​

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  • The environment/audio must compliment the story creating an immersive unique world.

  • The gameplay mechanics used in the game must be fun and intuitive to use.

  • The enemies must be enjoyable and satisfying to fight against.

  • The game must make the player feel they are running out of time forcing them to speed-run their way through.

  • The game must be challenging, any player should fail it at least 1 time before they fully complete it.

  • The game should last from 10 to 20 minutes.

Story:

The story was designed with the purpose of being immersive and not serious providing an interesting approach to a hardcore speed-run experience by  a casual context that will remind the player he's playing a game, not a real life simulator.

Mechanics:

When designing the core gameplay mechanics for Betrayal I knew I wanted to create a Third Person Shooter with time interactions so I designed and implemented the following mechanics:

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  • Weapon System: Provides 2 weapons that were included in one of the asset packs I used when creating the game. I modded the recoil system and created custom crosshairs to make it look better. The Handgun is a semi-auto pistol with a fair amout of recoil, the Assault Rifle is a full-auto weapon with less recoil than the Handgun.

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  • Grenades: Throwable greanades that will slow down in time whatever they touch and apply damage in the radius. Any enemy hit by these grenades will always drop a Time Pickup.

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  • Time Mechanics: As a reward for landing a headshot the player will be given a 1.5s bullet time (slow down time for 1.5s). This will help the player fighting enemies when running out of time. Sometimes the enemies will drop Time Pickups that will give the player extra time.

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  • Interaction: This system was provided by one of the asset packs I used when developing the game and allows the player to interact with multiple objects/doors placed around the levels. These objects are used to progress through the level.

Enemies:

There are are 5 different enemies in the game and they can have 2 different behaviours:

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  • Behaviour - Rush: When they see the player they will start moving towards him until reaching their attack range trigger. Once the attack triggers they will chase the player forever until he dies.

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  • Behaviour - Cover: They will idle on the cover spot until the attack range triggers. Once the attack rnage triggers they will start peaking randomly and if they have player sight they will attack.

Melee.png

Melee

Rush

Range - 1/10

Damage - 4/10

HP - 3/10

Handun.png

HG

Rush / Cover

Range - 5/10

Damage - 3/10

HP - 4/10

Shotgun.png

SG

Rush / Cover

Range - 3.5/10

Damage - 7/10

HP - 8/10

AssaultRifle.png

AR

Rush / Cover

Range - 7/10

Damage - 5/10

HP - 6/10

Sniper.png

SR

Cover

Range - 10/10

Damage - 10/10

HP - 5/10

Level Design:

To make the levels I used a linear room design. This type of design fits perfectly with the game idea as having a multi path level design in a speed-run hardcore game could potentially be frustrating since the different paths could have different gameplay length times.

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Taking this into account and following the story I created I built an octagonal structure with 3 floors plus the final level on the 4th floor. Each floor has 8 sides since it's an octagonal structure, however, not all of the sides are in use as I added an elevator connecting all 3 floors plus the final level. These sides are Rooms, which are the places where all the core gameplay will be found. The rooms have scaling difficulty in terms of enemies and puzzles so that the further the player reaches in the game the harder it will be to progress.

TopDownView.png

Floor 1 Flow

TopDownView.png

Floor 2 Flow

TopDownView.png

Floor 3 Flow

TopDownView.png

Final floor Flow

When designing the environment for Betrayal I opted to go for an apocalyptic environment. The lighting around the levels is dim and sinister having a lot of smoke around as the place has not been in use for several years and the corrosion has taken over causing several gas leaks. Also the few lights placed around the level are always pointing to key areas for the player to explore acting as a guide.

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An environmental distance fog is used to provide lighting a bit of volume and brings out some nice light shafts giving the environment a nice dusty touch. Other post process effects were used too to provide the ultimate dark/sinister touch to the scene in order to create a unique environment that would fit perfectly with the game.

Post Mortem:

What worked:

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  • The environment was well set up and the testers said it was good looking with a strong level design too. The testers appreciated being guided by the lights and the overall aesthetics of the game were polished.

  • Most of the testers failed the game running out of time more than once before fully completing it. This was part of the original design so I was extremely happy that this was working as expected.

  • Testers liked the special SFX I created for the bullet time when you land a headshot on an enemy.

  • Most of the testers laughed when they heard the story for the first time. This was the story's purpose so it worked perfectly with the original design.

  • The enemies, which are the default UE4 mannequin, ended up looking like robots thanks to the materials I created and some testers said they didn't really noticed it was the default mannequin.

  • Testers also said that some puzzles were quite interesting and challenging.

  • The people who played the game seemed to be having a good time.

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What didn't work:

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  • When playing the game in monitors with low brightness it was very difficult to see. This happened because I created the game with a monitor with 100/100 brightness settings. Lesson learnt, I must test other video settings before packaging.

  • Some players reported that the UI was not fitting their screen properly. I designed the game to be played on 1920x1080. Unfortunately I did not have time enough to cover a wider range of screen resolutions.

  • Some testers reported that having the bullet time triggering every single time on headshots was a bit too much. I should have implemented it as an activatable ability that you can activate after killing enemies and charging a bar, that would've worked better.

  • Some puzzles were not as appealing as the other ones.

  • The system requirements due to the graphics quality of the game was not huge but quite demanding, testers with a normal PC wouldn't struggle but PCs below the average would ofen struggle running the game even with the quality setting on minimum. This was due to the pressence of a huge rain particle system. I should've killed the particle system after the player progressed through the main menu into the game.

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Overview
Process
Design
Story
Mechanics
Enemies
Level Design
Post Mortem
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