Zenko: A Fox’s Tale

Development Time: 8 Months

Team Size: 17

Engine: Unreal Engine 4

Zenko is a third person platformer where the player controls a fox with the ability to swap between two realms.

My main responsibilities included developing a “realm swap” mechanic, coordinating with the design team to create platforming challenge mechanics, designing the third person camera functionality, and creating the in-game cinematic cutscenes.

Realm Swap:

At the start of development, I viewed this as the highest priority feature to prototype because it is the game’s core mechanic. If we couldn’t get this to work, then we would need to begin brainstorming again and alter the overall design. I took the initiative and stepped up as the person to begin prototyping a realm swap. After researching and prototyping a few different implementation methods, I presented the pros and cons for each to my design team. We settled on having three separate level streams. One level stream would remain persistent, and the other two would turn on or off depending on which realm the player is in. Once the prototyping phase was complete, I continued to improve upon this core mechanic for months. I set up proper Blueprint communication including interfaces and event dispatchers, so that the other designers and programmers could easily reference a realm swap.

Despite the mechanic functioning technically well, there was still one other design consideration that needed to be resolved. When a realm swap occurred there was an instant switch in the environment, but no visual feedback given to the player to communicate what happened. As a team we decided to fix this by including visual effects, audio, and a material change on the player fox. There wasn’t a technical artist on the team, or anyone else experienced in creating visual effects. Once again I took the initiative and gladly accepted the task of learning how to create visual effects. First, I met with the design lead to get a clear idea of what the effect should look like. I followed tutorials on similar effects, and altered them to suit our game. I iterated on the visual effect numerous times after listening to feedback from student and professional artists.

Platforming Challenges:

I coordinated with the level designers and other technical designers on the team to create mechanics that build off of realm swapping. First, I created Blueprints for objects that would become semi-transparent and turn off collision when the player is in the opposite realm. This assisted the level designers because they were able to place each object once instead of twice for each realm. Then, I assisted in the creation of various moving platforms that reacted to realm swapping. Finally, I helped a level designer implement a puzzle that involved locking the player into a specific realm.

Camera Functionality:

I looked at and played critically acclaimed third person platformer games to study how their camera’s work. I tried to reverse engineer their functionality and implement them into our game. Some examples include automatically rotating the camera while the player character is turning, resetting the camera behind the player character when dashing toward the camera, and causing the camera to look at a specific object when certain events occur. The camera mechanic I’m most proud of was inspired by Mario Odyssey. The camera will zoom toward or away from the player character based on the pitch rotation of the camera. This design eliminates the need for the player to manually control the camera’s distance and zoom.

Cinematics:

I created all 9 of the in-game cinematic cutscenes that communicate the story to the player. I worked with the design lead and followed his game design document in order to appropriately design these cutscenes. I also collaborated with the level designers to make sure the shots matched their vision. I constantly asked for feedback and critique of my work on these so that I could improve upon them. There wasn’t anyone on my team that had suitable experience, so most of my feedback was positive. With permission from my leads, I sought after feedback from an experienced animator. I was able to receive much more critique from them due to their knowledge with setting up camera shots and creating scenes for their animations. After using that feedback to iterate on my work, I was able to present cutscenes that my team unanimously agreed were an improvement.