The maiden of Spring

Narrative and background story

For project 1, my group and I have decided to work on developing a story-rich adventure rogue-like game that would take place in a surreal world during the reign of the Greek Gods. It would tell the fictive story of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter and maiden of the spring in her quest to find her mom as the lord of the dark underworld, Hades, the king of the multitudinous dead, carried her off when, enticed by the wondrous bloom of the narcissus, she strayed too far from her companions. In his chariot drawn by coal-black steeds, he rose up through a chasm in the earth and grasping the maiden by the wrist set her beside him. He bore her away weeping, down to the underworld.

One day, while the queen of the underworld hears the shrieks of the pain of all humanity in starvation because of the grief of her mother, that made all land on the surface, became sterile. Nothing grew; no seed sprang up; in vain the oxen drew the plowshare through the furrows. She decides to escape the gates of Tartarus. But in order to do that she will have to become stronger and gain back her superpowers. In order to do that she has to collect the 4 seasonal keys that she lost during her descent to Hades’ world.

Game Concept

This game will therefore make you embody Persephone in a 3D low-poly environment that will replicate the atmosphere of the antique Greek world.  You will be able to control your character through a joystick input system as well as a few other buttons to attack/dash and use special attacks. The player will have to go through four gradually difficult levels then contain themselves gradually difficult rooms. During each level, Persephone will be able to gather one of the four seasonal keys: Winter, Summer, Autumn, and Spring. The game will also be divided into four chronological chapters. The escape from Tartarus, The crossing of the Styx, The return to the surface, and The ascent of Olympus.

Core loop

The main actions the player will have to do during playtime would consist of: Fighting NPC antagonists with different attacking and dashing features that will evolve with the game progressing. With that comes our second element of the core loop which is gathering all kinds of loots. Those loots will be useful to improve weapons and our overall player’s abilities and skills. Finally, the last element of the core loop is moving within the roguelike maze and getting through the 4 mazes.

Mechanics and Art initial guidelines

Our game will adopt many common mechanics that are found in popular adventure roguelike games. We decided on opting for a Top-Down Camera view that will allow our character to see clearly what’s in front of him and behind him. Our character will have a health bar that he could feed, increase in size, and be penalized on. The player will be able to attack NPC entities in order to avoid getting killed as well as to be able to get access to the next room. Many loots will have bonus and penalty effects, you will have to avoid taking the penalities and gather as many bonuses as you can order to be able to solve some of the rooms. The idea of a story-rich game forces us also to work on an advanced dialogue system to make at smooth as possible. A possible mechanic also would be making a lot of the elements of the world destructible in order to find loots in the most random places to help the player.

On the artistic side of the game, we have decided to pick 3D low-poly models. In fact, the mobile constraint forces us to be able to make a very optimized game. Low poly 3D models are processor-friendly and will allow more mobile devices to support our game. Moreover, we decided to choose a cartoony-looking shader that will simplify the behavior of light points within the game scene and improve the game optimization.

Lastly, we decided to for a classic form of sound design. That will cover for the cartoony feel of our art and will allow the user to immerse within our world with a perfect mix of real and surreal. Ambient sound will be the backbone for the creation of the atmosphere as it will be present and unique to each level of the game as a signature.

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