Star Tempest
A top-down twin stick space shooter! This project is being created in Unreal Engine 4 by a three person team. Progress on this game is going at a steady pace.
Players take on the roll of one of the last human starship pilots, the last weapon in humanity's arsenal against the four encroaching invaders. Choose from ten different ships, upgrade your favorites, and use your enemies' weaknesses against them!
Check out the website and our developer diaries at the link below!
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Game Designer and Production Coordinator:
As the Lead Designer on Star Tempest, my tasks include:
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Designing and blueprinting core mechanics, player ships, and enemies
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Writing and updating design and production documentation
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Conducting and analyzing playtests
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Asset implementation
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Testing mechanics and bugfixes
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Other miscellaneous tasks
Software used:
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Unreal Engine 4
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Zbrush
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Blender
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Adobe Photoshop
Marrying Systems and Narrative Design:
As the all-around game designer for this project, I had to create both the Star Tempest's story and systems. Given the game's simplistic, arcade-style gameplay, I had to find a way to tell Star Tempest's story without getting in the way of its gameplay. The solution was to tell the story largely through art assets and environmental storytelling. Each zone is dedicated to the majority of a single enemy type. The space stations within that zone are corrupted by the presence of the enemies, covered in growths or extra parts that are associated with that enemy type. The player ships themselves each tell a story about how they were built as the player upgrades them, such as the Hunter slowly growing crystal around its body as the game progresses. These small, visual snippets of story exist to get the player interested in Star Tempest's deeper lore, which they can find and collect through lore logs and piecing together environmental story clues themselves.
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