Tales of Solarity
December 2023 - Present
Indie team project
My roles: Project lead, level designer, game designer
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Inspirations: Octopath Traveler (1 and 2), Stardew Valley, Dear Alice (YouTube advert), Snacko, Celeste
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Genres: 2.5D Fantasy, Solarpunk, Cosy, Farming sim, Exploration, with Visual Novel elements
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Platforms: PC & Consoles
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Engine: Unreal Engine 4.27.2
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Tools: Unreal Engine 4, Blender, Miro (previously Trello), GitHub, Google Workspace, Adobe Illustrator
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Team size: 12
DISCLAIMER
ToS began as a project of 2 people. After a few months, more folks joined our team and some things, even from the pre-production side, are being re-worked and are subject to change. This is because the project's scope has expanded. Also, not all the sections are complete as the project is still developing.
Pre-production
The very first thing I worked on was the Game Design Document. Originally, the scope was limited to the creation of a small quest and story, three NPCs, and two levels - a farm (the player's hub) and an abandoned mall (initially, it was a forest).
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Over the course of the development, we welcomed two more designers who helped me expand the GDD with more mechanics and systems.
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Being the only level designer, at the time of writing, I decided to maintain the two pre-planned levels and expand them.
This is the original gameplay loop diagram. The player character (Sunny) would walk around the farm and speak to the NPCs to obtain a quest for something they'd need.
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The player would move towards a location that would allow them to travel to the forest (now abandoned mall), utilise an arsenal of spells to help traverse the environment, collect the quest item and bring it back.
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The two first systems that were planned were magic and friendship, the latter would increase with each completed quests. By completing enough quests, Sunny would receive a friendship badge to signify that the main character and the NPC had maxed out their friendship. This system has now been reworked and expanded by the team.
I gathered images for houses, points of interest, and environments. I noticed that Solarpunk does not have a standardised architectural style, and artists tend to either make sleek hi-tech (but environmental friendly) buildings or traditional houses, both featuring plenty of vegetation and green energy appliances.
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The reference images helped me with inspiration and worked as sketching material.
Naturally I did the same for the mall, I gathered several images of abandoned malls - which helped me keep in mind how malls are usually structured and worked as a source of inspiration
I sketched out several shots and points of interest for the farm and the interiors of the mall, these helped create paper top-down maps of both levels. The farm's map is meant to connect the houses of each NPC living in the vicinity with the help of main and alternative paths.
The abandoned mall has several obstacles that are meant to block the player unless they use the correct spell. The map will encourage players to explore due to its intertwining paths, and also create some tension, since the player will need to prioritise mana consumption in order to get where they need to be.
Blockout
The blockout is currently in progress! I'll add more screenshots as things develop.
Thank you for checking out my project so far!