Candypocalypse

Candypocalypse is a third person action game taking place in a world overrun by a candy virus. the player plays as B, a survivor of the candy virus who searches the candy infested land for her friend. My goal for the design for this project was to design mechanics that lend its self to fast combat to cut through several enemies, part of the aesthetics was to make the player feel a sense of excitement while making their way through large groups of enemies, the sugar rush system feeds into this as well. playing something like Dynasty Warriors and Devil May Cry.

I provided the level design for this project, utilizing a top down layout that would be translated into a 3D environment with the help of an environment artist.

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Game Design

Combat

Combat in Candypocalypse, is designed to be fast-paced and intense, I was thinking of Devil May Cry style combat when I was designing how it should play, while still keeping in mind the constraints of a short development cycle. The game has three weapons that the player can use, each balanced differently to keep game variety up. Each weapon has a basic three hit combo, a jump attack, and a dash attack. From there each weapon has two special attacks. The aesthetics I was going for was the feeling of being able to cut through lots of enemies and the combat facilitates this, while also having various weapon types to keep things interesting. In this I made sure to design comabt mechanics to facilitate this.

Candy Cane Sword

The candy cane sword is the default weapon in which everything combat-related is balanced. its meant to be a sort of well rounded option between speed and strength. I felt like it was important to have a sort of baseline to build all balancing around.

Rock Candy Club

The rock candy club is the heavy weapon, using wide swings and focuses doing heavy damage to groups of enemies. I felt like it was important to have a powerful crowd control weapon to deal with the large volume of enemies in the game.

Lollipop Dagger

The lollipop daggers don't do a lot of damage but attack fast and are good for getting quick hits in. its special attacks do multiple hits to targets. I wanted a third weapon to round out the list of weapons, the fast attack good for doing a lot of damage to a single enemy.

Enemy Types

There are three main enemy types in the game. each enemy is designed to fill a specific function, in addition, most enemies have different variations that keeps a variety of gameplay up and keep with the dynamics and aesthetics we were going for. I wanted each enemy to be designed to make sure the player would face different challenges and need to worry about different things when approaching each enemy.

Gum Drops

Gum drops are the most common enemy types and the easiest to dispatch. I wanted to make sure the player was always defeating enemies, by having plenty of fodder enemies for the player to cut through.

Lollispider

Lollispiders are ranged enemies, they shoot projectiles at moderate range. I wanted to make sure there was some kind of ranged enemy to keep the player engaged and moving.

Jawbreaker

The jawbreaker is meant to be a heavier enemy that hits hard and takes more hits to take down. I designed this enemy this way to keep the enemy list well rounded to complement the weaker fodder enemies.

Sugar Meter

One of the game's main mechanics is balancing a sugar meter that I wanted to represent a sort of risk/reward system. when the player picks up sugar cube power ups, they not only gain health but also fills up a meter. When that meter is full they enter Sugar Rush, a sort of devil trigger mode that activates automatically, but the downside is when the meter runs out the player enters a depressed state called Sugar Crash, we wanted to create some dynamics where the player would have to pay attention to the meter and how they use their special attacks.

Boss Fight

The boss fight at the end was designed to be a tough fight at the end of the boss arena. I wanted the boss fight to be more than just a fight. the player first has to climb a challenging platforming section to reach the boss and fight them while trying not to fall off the platform the boss is on. there are also a few areas around the boss arena where the player can jump away in order to pick up health and sugar powerups.

Level Design

Forest Level

The forest was designed to be more open with a few focal points, being the lake of caramel, the village ruins, the hot chocolate falls, and the lake, and the cave entrance. This map was designed to be geared towards exploration, with large groups of enemies that roam around. I made sure the map had tall landmarks to help guide the player through the level. Care was taken to stick with the candy and post-apocalyptic themes.

Boss Area

The boss area is mostly a platforming challenger that utilized the players jump and dash abilities to climb a tall area. I wanted to shake up the gameplay a little bit by offering the platforming challenge as a break from all the combat from the previous level.

Documentation

Candypocalypse GDD

Most of the documentation was done by me, as the primary designer, I wrote most of the documents, primarily the gameplay documentation and drew a lot of diagrams to help show what I'm explaining when talking about mechanics and enemy behaviors.

Process

When we set out to make the project, I acted under the director and was tasked with designing the bulk of the game design under the parameters of what the director wanted with input from the main programmer. I wrote the game play sections of the game design document and gave that information to the programmers to implement. I also drew the level maps and gave those to the environment artist to made into the level. As we finished the forest level, I also drew the map for the boss cave. The environment artist made most of the level, while I designed and implemented the platforming puzzle.

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