A Twin-Stick Shooter With A Twist
The elevator pitch for Chrono Dungeons is, ‘A Twin-stick shooter meets SUPERHOT’. As players make their way through the Legend of Zelda-esque dungeons, they can slow down time with a button press to avoid traps and dispatch enemies.
I pitched this idea to my Game Studio capstone class, and was thankful enough to have three others join my team. I felt that the concept was simultaneously immediately interesting and also ripe with potential for being built upon. By the end of the year, my team ballooned to thirteen people.
Level Design
The game ended up with a whopping six levels, three of which I designed.
The first level (and what was originally planned to be the ONLY level in the game) was my take on a classic 2D Zelda dungeon. The overall shape of the level and the order of the rooms you most visit was decided early on, but the design of the rooms themselves went through many, many iterations.
I was frequently adjusting rooms to make sure they encouraged usage of the timestop, while also not overloading them with bullets and hazards. The revelation I had was that when time gets slowed down, the gameplay essentially switches to a slow-motion version of Frogger. So, I needed to design rooms that were interesting to traverse even when slowed down.
Level Design (continued)
After work on my first level was complete, I wanted to take things in a whole different direction for my second level. This lead to the development of my Charger Chase level. Later on, I wanted the game to have a good finale, so I began working on the Chrono Lord Boss battle. Click the links below for an in-depth breakdown of each of these levels!
Charger Chase Breakdown
Final Boss Breakdown
Enemy Design
As a designer, I collaborated with the team to design the various enemy types that would populate the levels.
My big contribution in this department was the Charger enemy: a big tank-like creature that needs to be hit from behind, requiring you to slow time and hit its weak point. Our artist Jesse did and our programmer Justin did fantastic jobs in bringing the charger to life, and I couldn’t be happier.
Programming
I also helped with programming work whenever I could. This included doing programming to complete a design task, (such as the scripting I had to do for my boss battles) but also some system design like the game’s camera system as well.
To get the Legend of Zelda style camera I wanted, I set up a camera that tracked an invisible object that flung itself to the room’s center upon the player entering.
I also worked on game feel related things like the player’s aiming ring beneath them, and how item pickups interact with the player.
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