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2D Platoformer -- ZER0 

Date: June 21st to July 26th, 2017

Role: Level Designer & Side Coder & Graphic Designer

Tools: Photoshop, C#, Unity3D

Type: Group Work

Team: Zoe Zhang, Brandyn Chew, Ishpreet Sekhon

Background:

ZER0 is a 2D platformer game made with Unity3D. The player plays a robot who powers on in a scrapyard during a storm after being struck by lightning. He could not remember anything but had got deactivated by a Scientist named Dr.White. The goal of the player is to seek him and find out the reason. There are three different levels in the game and the plot of our narrative follows a branching foldback structure. That means every decision player makes will have an influence on the result of the game.

Project Introduction

Development

Level Design:

 

The level design plays an extremely important role in a platformer game. Based on the given storyboard, as highlighted in a yellow color I designed three main scenes -- Scrapyard(Intro), Factory, Laboratory(Encounter with Infinite) in the game. 

GRAPHIC DESIGN:

 

Because of the tight schedule, we all agreed to use public free assets from Unity Store in the first place. However, we changed our path to make it by ourselves because the resources we found do not fit out design theme very well. I took the role and graphic-designed the background assets for all levels with Photoshop. 

SIDE CODER:

 

​As a side coder, I was responsible for functioning the objects that player interacts with. It includes the moving platform that player uses to upstairs/downstairs, the jump platform which bounces player off to a big jump and the transporter that travels the player from one side to another side.

I make use of difficulty scale to balance the game difficulty and player's skills. The introductory level is designed to not only start the story but also teach the player how to control character and jump as well as the usage of power core.

The factory level expects the player to control well to pass the platforms. The first branch comes in front of the player at this stage, it can either be giving power core to repair the other robot or using power core to open the door.

There are more obstacles and tool are introduced in Laboratory level, the player will not pass the laser door until they bring back power core to the console room through the paths.

Project Reflection

I have learned a great deal about level design and narrative design from this project. The critical path for the player must be evident and it is important that they understand where they can go, which paths branch and what can be interacted with. Besides, I am able to use Unity3D to build a game at some level and code scripts with C#.

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