Spirit Link (2024)
LEVEL DESIGN
UNREAL ENGINE 5
MIRO
NOTION
This First Playable Product is a team project for my baccalaureate. In this game, you play as two characters, a little girl and a little ghost, at the same time. You need to solve puzzles and dodge the Ghost Hunters and their gadgets to continue your quest to save the ghost family.
This team project has been done as one of the options for our graduating projects in my baccalaureate. This stands as a First playable product of what this game could’ve become.
Game design
See the documentation on Notion (in french).
Inspirations
Spirit Link was inspired by the game Brothers: a tale of two sons (2013, Starbreeze Studios AB) for their 3C, the mechanics unique to each character and the presence of the story. We liked the design challenge of having to control two characters at the same time, and wanted to experiment with that. We also needed a reason to have two characters to control and that’s when we decided to add unique abilities to our characters as Brothers did with their characters. Finally, since we were two narrative designers, we decided to bring the story forward in our game to make it an important part of our game. For the First Playable Product, I was not the one in charge of the narrative aspect of the game, my main priority was to work on the level design, but I assisted my colleague to be sure that everything was fitting perfectly together.
To distance ourselves from Brothers, we decided to take the game Invisible, Inc. (2015, Klei Entertainment) as our second inspiration. We really wanted to make a game with ghosts, and one of the elements that we wanted was to have stealth moments where the ghost needed to avoid ghost hunters. We liked the isometric camera and the AI field of view of Invisible, so we took inspiration from them to bring to Spirit Link.
3C
For Spirit Link, our two characters were a little girl (named Sophia) and a little ghost (named Theo) that needed each other to move forward in their quest, developing a friendship along the way. Since we needed them to work together, sometimes at the same times, we not only needed to have complementary mechanics (see my mechanics section below), but needed a controller to support the gameplay. That is why we decided to go with the same controller as Brothers have in their game. We control both characters at the same time with one controller: left is for Theo and right is for Sophia. We decided to use 4 inputs, 2 for each: joystick to move and trigger to interact with objects (see image 1). We opted for a fixed camera to reduce the cognitive charge of the players since, as opposed to Brothers, we are in a stealth environment and this already takes it toll on the players’ concentration. One of my goals for this project was also to add a more « real life » feeling on the controller for Sophia. So, to do her interactions in the environment, I wanted to make the players to move the joystick while they maintained the interaction button down. I will expand on that in my Mechanics section below.
Mechanics
Since our two characters needed to have adjacent abilities, Sophia, our little girl, was to control everything that was physical, like opening doors or erasing sigils on the ground, and Theo, our little ghost, was to control everything that was electrical (like electrical locks and radios). I was in charge of the gameplay objects that Sophia could interact with, since we wanted them to have a deeper control than just one input.
I wanted the players to feel like they really needed to mimic what they would do in real life and, with that, to add a time pressing element in the stealth environment. This was my one of my next steps if our project would’ve been selected to continue. So to open a door, the players would’ve needed to maintain the interact button down, and move the joystick up to open them. The doors were functional and the mechanic was a success in the playtest that we did, but since we didn’t have the time to do the other additional inputs for all the interactions, we decided to remove the functionality for the First Playable Product. To erase the sigil, we wanted the players to maintain the interact button down and swipe the joystick left from right to erase. To deactivate the ghost trap, we wanted to take the control of the doors but have the players to move the joystick downward instead of upward. Finally, for the incense diffuser, we wanted to make the players to turn the joystick clockwise at the same time as maintaining the interact button down to really have the feeling of having to turn the crank to stop the diffusion (see image 2).
Level design
Onboarding plan
To onboard the players to our game, I began by distributing all the game mechanics to different levels. I did it to space out what the players need to learn in a certain amount of time and to bring an element of novelty to the gameplay when they would grow accustomed to the already present mechanics. I chose which mechanics to learn when with the level of « friendliness » we wanted the two characters to have: for example, they need each other’s abilities to pass through the second floor of the house (level 2), but they will need to interact with each other to go on in the first floor of the house (level 3).
To learn certain mechanics in a « safe zone », I wanted to have an attic as a first level and as a tutorial for the 3C and the simple mechanics. After that, to help the players, my team and I added the necessary inputs above each interactable objects in the environment. To better identify these objects, we also added an outline around these objects that represented Sophia’s or Theo’s color, showing that they are the character that can interact with it.
Level intentions for a First Playable Product
For this step in our game creation process, we decided to show off what a part of our third level could be to have a good feel of the difficulty, the dynamic of the mechanics and the intensity of the game. I made three segment in our level to show off the three types of intensity and gameplay that we could have.
To help guide the players toward important gameplay elements, I added flickering lights in the environment. This choice of visual guidance was to captive players’ attention on these elements without feeling too much « out of space », and the flickering effect also added to the spooky and ghost theme of the game, while also being low cost in production time since we were in a First Playable Product state.
The first segment is to represent what a « normal » segment would be. It requires thinking to find the way out of the level and some stealth element to get the necessary parts. It is the middle ground for the thinking, the stress put on the player and the cooperative dynamic, making it a level of middle intensity, which is what we want the majority of our segments to be. We also added some story parts in form of a dialog zone in a safe place and a cinematic that the players can trigger when they finished the segment. I also added a flickering light above the door to the bedroom (which is the goal of the segment) and above the key to unlock that door. We can see below my plan and the final result in engine.
For the second segment, I wanted to have a jump in intensity. To achieve this, I put a trigger zone in the middle of the segment, before the puzzle part, and had a new ghost hunter spawn, chasing the players. When the players saw the new ghost hunter, they became really stressed and we saw the struggle in their eyes. To make this intense moment a pleasant one, I decided to create a simple puzzle to ease the mental load of the player, since my goal in this segment was to have a stressful moment and not a « stop and thinking » moment like in the first one. The majority of players got caught in this segment, but with our respawn system at the beginning of this section, it was easy for them to try again. When players accomplished this segment, when I ask if they liked it they were pretty proud of them.
Level intentions for a First Playable Product
For this step in our game creation process, we decided to show off what a part of our third level could be to have a good feel of the difficulty, the dynamic of the mechanics and the intensity of the game. I made three segment in our level to show off the three types of intensity and gameplay that we could have.
To help guide the players toward important gameplay elements, I added flickering lights in the environment. This choice of visual guidance was to captive players’ attention on these elements without feeling too much « out of space », and the flickering effect also added to the spooky and ghost theme of the game, while also being low cost in production time since we were in a First Playable Product state.
The first segment is to represent what a « normal » segment would be. It requires thinking to find the way out of the level and some stealth element to get the necessary parts. It is the middle ground for the thinking, the stress put on the player and the cooperative dynamic, making it a level of middle intensity, which is what we want the majority of our segments to be. We also added some story parts in form of a dialog zone in a safe place and a cinematic that the players can trigger when they finished the segment. I also added a flickering light above the door to the bedroom (which is the goal of the segment) and above the key to unlock that door. We can see below my plan and the final result in engine.
Colleagues
- François Marin Morin: Narrative designer.
- Louis Lefebvre: AI Designer, Game Designer and Gameplay Programmer.
- Jessica Bonhomme: Lead Artist and VFX Artist.
- Eddy Iv: Animator.
- Alycia Castonguay: Environment Artist, Character Artist and Level Artist.
- Carl-Henri Gilles: 3D Artist and Concept Artist.
- Rachel Roach Robertson: Concept Artist and Texture Artist.
- Andy Ke: Rigger and Lighting Artist.