Zonghao Wu
Gameplay & Level Designer
Roguelike
First Person Action Shooter
Strategic Combat
Modular Upgrades
About the game
Viscerate is a fast-paced, first-person roguelike action shooter with a grid-based modular upgrade system inspired by Resident Evil 4 and the "shoot to stager, melee to kill" combat loop inspired by Doom.
Contributions
Product Owner
As the product owner and lead designer of the game, I ironed out the core gameplay loop with texts, flowcharts, and reference images from the start of this project and aligned it with the team to make sure everyone understood and felt comfortable with where we were heading.
I set milestone goals and sprint plans for each stage throughout the 6-week development and drove the team to meet these goals. When things were not going as planned, like certain features were taking longer than expected and hindering the overall project progress, I made quick adjustments to streamline those features to ensure the timely delivery of the game while still adhering to the core pillars of the game.
Gameplay & Combat Design
I designed and iterated most of the features, mechanics, and systems that constitute the core gameplay loop and combat loop of the game, including the enemy poise/stun system, the weapon & stats system, the grid-based modular upgrade system, the enemy behavior patterns, the elemental synergies, etc.
(The initial prototype was third-person and changed to first person in the actual development due to scoping concerns)
I prototyped the weapon system, the elemental synergy system, and the melee system with Blueprint, which were later further polished by the programmers in the team. During the development, my programmer teammates developed a customizable system for creating upgrade modules, which I used to create 40 unique upgrade modules in the game.
(Melee attack is designed to be a finisher attack on stunned enemies)
(Inflict both "Ignited" and "Shocked" to the enemy to cause combustion)
(Weapon system prototype Blueprint)
Level Design
I designed 3 "combat room" levels and the "safe room" level (where the player respawns after dying and can purchase upgrades). I blocked out these levels with white boxes and placeholders first to test if the movement and combat feel smooth, iterated upon them, and then worked with the programmers and the artists to implement all the mechanics and art assets. Based on the intended gameplay experience of the game, I also set some basic level design guidelines for my other designer teammates.
Combat Room 1 level breakdown
This level is the first one I made and has a relatively simple square-shaped layout. Given the fast-paced horde shooter feature of the game, I want players to be able to easily navigate through the level without getting lost or being completely cornered by hordes of enemies, and always have "a way out" in any scenario. Therefore, I was paying particular attention to the visibility, interconnectivity, different countermeasure options provided to players at different spots, and the balance between open space and sufficient cover objects.
The platforms in this level are divided into 3 layers, and all platforms are interconnected with each other through multiple stairways or jump pads. Through several tests and iterations, I ensured that players can easily navigate between different platforms through stairways or jump pads without being trapped at dead ends by enemies. When players are on large, open platforms without any cover, they can utilize the explosive barrels I put there to deal with large numbers of enemies.
Combat Room 2 level breakdown
This level has a T-shaped layout with a large structure in the middle, dividing the level into 2 sections. On the basis of the general principles of easy navigation and "always a way out" (always a stairway or jump pad at every dead end), this level also aims to encourage players to utilize the interconnected structures in the level to gain advantage in combat by either making the enemies lose track of you or launching sudden attacks on enemies from unexpected corners.
Given the increased complexity in this level, to ensure players don't waste time on finding the right path and get frustrated, I created 4 pathways that allow players to traverse from Section 1 to Section 2, making sure players can easily see at least one of the pathways no matter where they are.
Combat Room 3 level breakdown
This level is adapted from the second level but with a simpler and more straightforward layout. The main part of the level is basically a large open space with several large pillars serving as the only cover, enabling players to fully focus on the fast-paced combat without having to worry about navigation too much.
Safe Room level breakdown
This level is more about functionalities and presenting these functionalities to players in a clean and clear way.
UI Design
I made most of the combat-related UI, including the enemy HP bar & poise bar, hit marker, kill marker, damage indicator, buff/debuff indicator, etc. I aimed to make the UI look juicy while still maintaining visual clarity.
Apart from the combat-related UI, I also made level transition, main menu, tutorials, etc.
Challenges, iterations and learnings
The main challenge I met during the development of this project was that the development progress of several crucial gameplay mechanics was constantly slower than expected, especially the grid-based modular upgrade system, which also hindered the progress of other parts of the game. This is due to two factors: 1. The initial ideas for the modular upgrade system were a bit too complicated and overscoping for the time we have. 2. My programmer teammates were quite unsophisticated with Unreal and C++ at that time, as most of them had very little experience with Unreal back then.
In order to keep the development progress on track without compromising the initial vision and core pillars of the game too much, I made multiple iterations to the fundamental gameplay mechanics to streamline the workload, including removing the weapon swapping features, removing weapon recoils and bullet spread features, having one unified upgrade inventory for both fire modes instead of having a separete one for each, cutting the weapon catogories from 6 (2 basic weapons, each with 2 different evolved forms) into 3 (1 basic weapon with 2 different evolved forms). I was a bit worried these changes would largely dilute the gameplay depth of this game back then, but it turned out the game was still fun and intense with these iterations.
What I learnt most during this project was that as a designer, I shouldn't fully rely on the programmers to fully implement the mechanics that I had in my vision. During the first two weeks of this project, I was mainly doing level blockouts and writing game design documents on Miro instead of doing rapid prototyping in the engine. When I realized that my programmer teammates could not fully implement the mechanics I wanted in time, the time we had left was already quite limited, and we had to cut some of the features. I learned that an ideal workflow was that I do a rapid prototype of the mechanic/feature I wanted to first (like how I did for the player melee mechanic), showcase it to the programmers, let them work further on that mechanic/feature and integrate it into the larger system. In this way, the communication between designers and programmers is more cohesive and the overall development was more efficient.