Nandan Jadhav
The player is challenged to reach the end of the level with the tools provided to them. They have to navigate through a maze crawling with enemies without getting caught!
Platform: PC
Genre: Top-Down Stealth, Puzzle
Game Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Role: Level Designer, AI Designer, Gameplay Designer
Timeframe: 1 Month
Gameplay Design
The player's movement is designed to be point-and-click so that they can effectively navigate the maze-like levels.
This restricted movement ensures the player's focus on using the other features on the keyboard and prevents them from getting flustered in a stressful situation.
The core gameplay involves the player using the specified keys to manipulate the enemies to safely make it through the maze.
Enemies are selected using the arrow keys, and can be stunned, and distracted by an alarm, and their path can be reversed by pre-specified key bindings shown below.
AI Design
The AI was designed using state machines. The AI has three states; a patrol state in which they patrol on a selected path, a chase state in which they switch to when the player enters their vision cone, and an idle state that is used when they are not patrolling or chasing. Other states are also implemented based on the player manipulation specified in the gameplay design section.
The enemies switch between these states when certain conditions are fulfilled.
LEVEL DESIGN
The levels are visually simplistic. The focus was placed on the enemy pathing and the location of the alarms.
The levels are designed to put players in different situations using obstacles and enemies.
Each level can be cleared using multiple strategies using the different tools provided to the player.