Marcus Nobs

At Death We Part
Group Project – Game Designer Submission

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Presentation (Further Info)

A 2.5D Puzzle Platformer, wherein the player must alternate between two characters, utilising their unique properties and abilities to progress through and complete a series of puzzle and platforming challenges to reach the end of the level.

A grief-strucken lover, their mental state damaged so terribly that their psyche is split in two, an alter created in the image of the protagonist’s love interest who exists in a dimension of darkness, and the broken state of his natural conciousness who exists in a dimension of light. Both selves inhabiting one physical body, but only one form can exist through it at a time. They must both traverse through the mindscape, travelling through memories as the protagonist and their alter collaborate to progress on a journey of processing grief and moving on, until both halves are eventually reunited.

This is my personal submission for a group project shared between myself, a games developer Madeleine Thomas, and a 3D Games Artist James Davies, of which you will see their own submissions of our shared project in their respected showcases.

As Game Designer I took reign of the overall idea of the game, utilising themes of light and darkness to try and create a core mechanic that while simple in design, can be expanded upon in unique and intricate ways, similar to that of the experience in the “Portal” games.

Over the course of its production the original scope for my vision has drastically changed, as is the nature of a group project; opinions, experience and the personal goals of all contributors had to be considered for everyone to put in a significant level of work that was realistically achievable.

My significant contributions to this project consist of the overall level design (including the environmental setpieces), music and sound design, a dynamic camera system, light and dark behaviour in the environment, pause screen transition animations, and generally monitoring code provided by the developer to work more consistently with the gameplay loop.

This project has allowed me to experience the nature of working with a group, I expected there would be a lot of clashing in ideas, however I found it particularly difficult in concretely and concisely explaining the vision of my gameplay in a way that was clear and complete enough for the rest of my group to entirely understand and get behind the ideal goal i was looking for.

Ultimately we’ve created a challenging experience that can only be expanded upon, I intend to use this project as a Blueprint, to expand upon the gameplay experience of this game, aswell as that of all possible future platforming games moving forward.