Technical Designer
Little Bo Reap
A twisted take on a cutesy folk tale!​
Technology: Unity
Date: May 2023
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This game is the result of a two semester long project where I and a team of game developers concepted, prototyped, and then delivered on the finalized product. Little Bo Reap is a Single Player Action-Platformer where the titular character Bo Peep goes a bloody rampage against the forces Baba Yaga, using her undead sheep as dependable and expendable soldiers.
My roles in this project were Lead Designer and Product Owner. As a lead designer I handled design and implementation of various technical systems and our levels. I also coordinated the needs of the design team with those of the rest of our team. As Product Owner I was responsible for maintaining a unified vision of our game during the year long development process. Below is a trailer created by our VFX Artist Jessica Hunsberger.
Player Movement
The movement system of the player is entirely controlled by Unity's built in physics system. Forces and friction are applied to give smooth feeling movement to the player. The player has a speedy dash and the ability to jump into the air.
The player has two capsule colliders that represent the sides and bottom of the player. The sides of the player are using a frictionless physic material to allow the player to move easily and not get stuck while touching walls. The bottom of the player has higher friction that allows the forces acting on it to come to a halt.
Sheep Based Combat
The player's main combat ability is to summon and command flocks of undead sheep. The player controls three separate flocks that each have unique stats and active abilities. Minor variation in the scale of the models is added when the sheep are summoned in order to make them look less uniform.
As technical designer I was responsible for the initial implementation of the sheep AI and abilities. To do this I implemented a state machine to handle what each sheep was doing. Sheep will follow the player when commanded to or wander aimlessly when idle. Sheep can be commanded to swarm and attack targets and can also be launched as a projectile.
It was important for the sheep to be able to follow the player anywhere. I implemented the ability for sheep to jump between disconnected navigation meshes using points that can be set up in the level. When a sheep connects to one of these points it will play it's jump animation and land on the connected navigation mesh.
I also implemented the initial abilities for two of our sheep types. Yellow rams can gather around the player and charge forward in a line. Purple fluffy sheep can spin around the player in a defensive vortex before being shot outward.
Levels
I was also responsible for creating functional and fun levels for our player to traverse. The core challenge for the player comes in the form of battle arenas where waves of enemies must be dispatched by the player. Using the arena tools our programmer created I created a series of arenas gradually scaling in difficulty as the player gains more power over the course of the game
In order to give the player some breathing room between combat arenas there are short platforming and puzzle sections. These short challenges make use of the abilities of the sheep the player has gathered.
