Chaos Strike
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Sword-play
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Team size: Solo project
Duration: 13 weeks
Platform: PC
Project: Chaos Strike
Role: Game designer & Tech designer
An enthralling fantasy action game featuring swift movement and strategic sword-play. Set in a world of vast lands and mysterious caves, players engage in exhilarating battles, utilizing a variety of abilities and skills to overcome unique enemy attacks. As the solo Designer / Developer, the core focus was on crafting the game's core mechanics and ensuring a fluid and challenging combat experience.
Responsibilities / Highlights
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Game Design & Technical Design: As the solo developer I focused on integrating technical aspects with creative gameplay elements.
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Enemy AI Development: Innovated enemy actions with distinct attacks, enhancing player challenges, and implemented these using Behaviour trees for AI.
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Gameplay Iteration: Conducted extensive testing and refined game mechanics based on player feedback and data analysis.
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Input Queue System: Engineered a system for chaining attacks, allowing for fluid and responsive combat sequences.
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Omni-Directional Dodge System: Developed a versatile dodge system using advanced locomotion animation, improving player mobility and game interaction.
Enemy Design
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Enemy AI Design: Each enemy AI features unique attack patterns and movement statistics, enhancing the game's strategic depth.
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Special Abilities: AI enemies possess special abilities such as gap-closing maneuvers, area-of-effect (AOE) attacks, and increased attack speeds, presenting varied challenges to the player.
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Wave-Based Enemy Spawning: Enemies spawn in waves, strategically designed to escalate the player's sense of intensity and challenge as the game progresses.
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Boss Mechanics: The game features a formidable boss with spell-casting abilities, adding a layer of complexity and strategy to the combat experience.
My thought process:
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I wanted the enemies to be fast to challenge the player; the more skilled they are at dodging, the easier it gets.
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Slower enemies cannot be staggered, so the player has to dodge out of the way.
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Faster-moving enemies can be staggered, but when the player is fighting multiple enemies, it gets harder as staggering them all is difficult, yet it's possible since you can attack more than one enemy at a time and stagger them.
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Enemies have combo attacks, allowing for more versatile and punishing attacks if the player decides not to dodge.
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All the enemies have a special attack that makes them unpredictable but gives the player enough time to react.
Player highlights
For Chaos Strike, the omni-directional dodge system is a key player feature, designed to be highly responsive and versatile. It's essential for the gameplay, as the game get much harder fighting 2 or more enemies at the same time and some enemies cannot stagger. This dodge mechanic allows players to evade in any direction, even at the last moment, seamlessly integrating with the combat system for fluid attacks and movements. This design choice significantly enhances the player's tactical options and responsiveness during combat encounters.
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Omni-Directional Dodge System: Allows for versatile movement, enhancing the player's ability to evade attacks.
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Input Queue System: Streamlines combat, enabling smooth execution of attack combos.
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Attack Combos: Offers a dynamic and engaging combat experience.
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Items: Features items like life steal and burn damage, as well as a totem turret, adding strategic depth to gameplay.
My thought process:
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I want the enemies to be fast so the player needs to have a responsive dodge that can be used in any direction.
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The actions need to be fluid, so responsive input queue system is necessary.
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The player needs to be able to fight multiple enemies and stagger them simultaneously, so melee combat should allow attacking multiple enemies at once.
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The attacks should be exciting to play and visually stunning.
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Items that change the player's strategy, such as equipping a totem, make the player play less aggressively, while life steal encourages more aggressive play.
Gameplay
Environment highlights
Selection of Game Blueprints
