Fly By Knight

Fly By Knight is an action/platformer video game where you are an adventurous bird knight fighting to free your critter friends from prison gems.

Student Project
DigiPen

Year
2021

Team Size
3

Genre
Action Platformer

Engine
Unity

Workload
14 weeks / 4-5 hours a week

My Roles

Design Lead

Project Management
Design Documentation
Creative Vision

Level Designer

Tutorialization
Jump Puzzles
Nonlinear Level Flow
Player Guidance

Contributions

As the game’s lead designer, I wanted to focus on the goal of designing to our game pillars while maintaining a fluid project scope. When we shipped the project at the end of the semester, our small team was incredibly pleased that we could accomplish everything we set out to do; that meant sticking to our game pillars. Throughout the process, I ensured that we pruned our scope while honoring the hopes and expectations of the entire team. We nailed all our goals and published our game on Steam at the end of the semester.

Before implementing the level tilemaps in Unity, I mapped out the entire level with pencil and paper to plan the golden path and visualize the level flow. Like many games, we started with a broad scope. We planned six mini-levels that were cut down to three, plus a tutorial section. Mini-levels are essential branches of the main level that highlight different mechanics in the game. I implemented the tutorial section, a mini-level that introduced the mushroom launch pad mechanic. I also created and implemented the fruit collection mechanic throughout the entire level.

In addition to the lead and level design, I designed the UI for all the menus and the HUD within the game and acted as the game’s audio designer. All menu, enemy, and player behavior implementations were done using Unity visual scripting.

Mushroom Jump Puzzle

Process

Tutorialization

Our first game pillar was: Easy to Pick Up and Play.
Easy to play meant the tutorial had to be as easy to learn and interpret.

Keyboard icons float at specific points in the tutorial section to show the player which keys to press.

I designed the tutorial to dynamically switch between WASD and the Arrow keys, depending on the user's preference.

I staged the tutorial's flow to guide the player through the different types of actions they can perform.

Multi-jumping from platform to platform.
Horizontal slashing through barriers.
Downward slashing in the air through barriers.
Attacking enemies with sword slashes.
Upward slashing through barriers.
Attacking gems to free your hamster friends from their crystal prison.

By the end of the tutorial section, the player has:
- Explored the game’s core mechanics.
- A roadmap toward their goal for the rest of the level.

Highlight Game Feel with Level Design

Our second game pillar was: Feels Good to Play.
Feeling good to play meant the level needed something for the player to interact with that showcased our excellent character controller.
I created the mushroom jump pads to launch the player in the air, which did two things for engagement:

In a jump-heavy platformer, it intensified a core mechanic.
It feels fantastic to dive-attack into and launch in the air.

The Challenge of Exploration

Our third game pillar was: Room for Exploration
The challenge of designing a large central hub was three-fold:
- Vertical level layout means slow progress.
- Missing a jump could result in too much backtracking.
- Players may get lost.
The elegant solution was mushroom launch pads in the hub. They served as:
- Landmarks to prevent the player from getting lost.
- Vertical launches maximize the player’s vertical mobility, reducing the pain of backtracking and slow progress at once.
Guidance was another essential tool to keep our players on track.
- The collection feature was the primary method for guiding the player in a 2D game, without relying on flashy art or a robust lighting system.
- Players were also drawn to eliminate the relatively weak enemy slimes. So enemies were also used to guide and engage the player.