Skylost (In Development)

Details

• Engine/Platforms: built in Unity for PC & Mac

• Team Size: 25 people

• Production Length: 13 months (EXPECTED)

Overview

Skylost is a 3D exploration and crafting game where you climb your way through dangerous floating islands in search of your lost love Amelia. After crash landing, you will gather resources and craft the tools you need to ascend the spire, avoiding it’s beasts and dangers, to uncover the fate of a missing expedition.

Inspired by Subnautica, the player will have the opportunity to build items such as grappling hooks, gliders, distraction devices, and smoke bombs and explore a wild sky world.

Enemy Design Showcase (In Progress)

I designed The Screecher creature in Skylost, the central obstacle in the game and one of two enemies. The screecher was designed to be a flying threat to the player as they ascend the vertical environment, to create high points of tension and emergent gameplay that arises out of it’s systemic design. The essential emotion is fear and clenching tension.

The key thing I focused on for the design was what information the player was given and creating a sense of tension and fear. For example, I selectively chose to withhold any information on the radius of the beast’s vision cone or it’s potential next moves, but audio queue’s help inform the player that the beast is nearby. The effect is an uncertainty in the player on whether they’ve been seen or not and need to flee. For the attacks, there is a clear wind up for upcoming attacks and the beasts are artificially slowed when they are offscreen to make it more consistent for the players to just barely dodge their attacks, to create more exciting moments for the player. The beasts knock the player just slightly and the camera falls over, which creates a sense of danger as the environment is highly vertical, resulting in a fear that they will fall while only doing so rarely. Finally, the beasts also have a lower chance to pick up the player and carry them off the side rather than just knock them. This is very easy to deal with for the player’s tools as it’s slow and reactable (even on a first attempt), but the experience feels extremely emergent and extremely high stakes in gameplay.

Design Specifications

Level Design Showcase - Roost Island Blockmesh (In Prog)

Roost Island is one of the areas I’ve designed in Skylost. Serving as one of the later game areas and emotionally focusing on vertigo and adrenaline thrill, Roost Island is home to the Screecher (design above). I started the design, as always, with the goals, content, and constraints. For this design, I started with drafts of areas that were highly vertical and ascent based. I imaged the Screechers as creatures that nest in caves built into the cliffs and built caves into the blockmesh. I created floating cliffs around the central mass, alternating areas that were exposed and protected, and pathed the flying beasts around the island’s airspace. This creates an effect of the player having to make dashes for the next safe area across perilous heights, hoping to avoid the flying beast, before having a moment of safety.

For the content, we needed a recipe and a place where Amelia (the character we are searching for) stopped and rested. I created a cave hidden behind a waterfall and pointed it toward the previous area, creating a strong visual landmark that naturally creates a question in the player’s mind - what’s in the cave behind the waterfall. The recipe I put at the top in the biggest Screecher’s nest, a reward for climbing to the top with a final challenge. Grab the crafting recipe and escape before you are found out! I added cover around the area so the player could have an opportunity to break line of sight and hide from the beast in a pinch.