SANDRAL
Platform: Windows PC
Engine: Unity
Language: C#
Tools Used: Unity Development Kit, Fungus (Unity Package), Aseprite, Ableton Live Lite, Audacity
Duration: 4 months (2022)
Team Size: 1
Project Design Goals:
- Explore the potential of level/puzzle design and pacing as a storytelling tool.
- Create a polished experience that strongly displays game feel principles.
- Build a ludic sketch that clearly showcases the potential of a wider game concept and some of its core systems and structural elements.
SANDRAL is an isometric puzzle-adventure game about exploring an ancestral shrine dedicated to your own family. You play as Darin, who has travelled to this shrine in search of answers about the history of his lineage.
The ludic sketch contains a small slice of a potential wider experience, showcasing a simple 'hub' area that branches out into more linear sequences, with each branch containing puzzles and scenes that tell the story of one of Darin's ancestors.
Available Here: https://josiah-hendy.itch.io/sandral-ludic-sketch
Ludic Sketch Design Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XavVDW0bWGD5GZ2vsJFmj0mqYAyz3cnjliICUR49T70/edit?usp=sharing
Read here for a look into the specific intent behind the SANDRAL ludic sketch, and a thorough explanation of the design that went into the project!
This ludic sketch was a second year university project. With SANDRAL, I wanted to explore a different method of interactive storytelling than the one I explored in A Tale or Two. Instead of having the player carve out their own story in a branching narrative, my goal was to convey a narrative through puzzles and level design, using little to no dialogue.
The ludic sketch contains the start of one of the family members, Ernest's, 'branch'. I designed the central mechanic and iterative puzzle design around the backstory and characteristics of this family member.
The level revolves around a balloon that carries a small flame; this flame is spread to torches in each room that then open the path forward. The objective of the puzzles reflects Ernest's own tendency to spread his warmth and kindness to others. Furthermore, the level illustrates how, in wake of hardship and cold (depicted by the fans which can extinguish the balloon's flame), the character would seek to 'rekindle their flame' and continue to help others.
This approach of using level design and gameplay to have players immerse themselves in and become a part of the story excites me, and has gone on to inform a lot of my philosophies as a game developer. The audio for SANDRAL is also developed to match the narrative of the level, as the adaptive background music builds as the player makes progress through the branch.
My priority is for every aspect of a game to tie back into the core experience and theme it is trying to convey.
SANDRAL remains a good proof of concept for this expressive approach to design, and is a project I would like to expand beyond a ludic sketch someday. It provides a solid foundation for the immersive design principles that I seek to build upon and hone in both my professional and personal work moving forward.