Asteria was my first experience working on a game with a team of people I hadn't already known for some time. While it wasn't my favorite game to work on it taught me a lot.
“I had no special training at all; I am completely self taught. I don’t fit the mold of a visual arts designer or a graphic designer. I just had a strong concept about what a game designer is. Someone who designs projects to make people happy. That’s a game designer’s purpose.”
Goals:
Get experience at a professional gaming studio.
Create a crafting space game like Terraria.
Learn more about level design.
Asteria is a procedurally generated game, with human created temples. In this game, I was a level designer who worked primarily on the first and last levels. Some of my favorite contributions to this game were the core mechanics used on the final level and some of the mechanical interactions created by mixing the different elements in the game.
This was the first published game that I ever worked on. It taught me a lot about scope and working with stakeholders who have the final say. While much of the core components were built before I was brought on I learned about using the game's engine, and what features need to be scrapped for the sake of time. You don't have a game for anyone to play if you haven't shipped anything. If this looks like something you are interested in you can find out more here.
This was an interesting first experience with a studio. Each major level of the game was handcrafted by myself or another designer, and the overworld was procedurally generated. This made it so that the entrance to each level could be randomized (to a point). This would change a number of resources the player had when entering a new level. Because of this, we had to make sure that each level had everything the player needed in it. This had the side effect of making the over world simply a hub for base building materials and general components.
Scope
I was brought onto the game during the last 3 months before our ship date. While most of the basic level structure was already laid out the design and details of each level had not been created. Not only that but we didn't have many unique interactions. Sure we had enemies, and an oxygen system but not much that would interact with the world or work as a dangerous environment for the player to worry about.
We did have some ideas that made it into the game such as methane gas that would explode on contact with fire or lava or an acid that would eat through some types of materials. However many of the ideas that we really wanted to do didn't make it in due to time. If we had a clearer idea and talked about some of these ideas early on we could have built them into the game and used them when designing levels. This really taught me to take the time to figure out the features you want early on so they can be tested and nothing core to your experience is left on the table. In short, find the fun early on.