Gameplay and Narrative Designer
Trench Boy
Gameplay Designer & Narrative Designer
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Unity
6 Members team
(February - May 2019)
Trench Boy is a strategy and resource management game where the player must help carry supplies to help the other soldier hold the line against hordes of the enemy soldier.
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Responsibilities:
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Design the core gameplay of moving boxes, giving supplies to allies, and carrying them to the field medic.
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Design trench level layout and difficulty progression on each day of the assault. With each passing day, enemies will spawn in greater numbers, have higher accuracy, and start using more grenades to take out ally NPCs.
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Create Ally NPCs with different traits, designs, and personality quirks to make them feel more alive and memorable for the player.
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Author dialogues of Ally NPCs with the player character, with each character exploring different topics of their interests or personal life.
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Write after action report card at the end of the campaign, reflecting player's actions through the newspaper and showing how they performed
Gameplay Designer
Gameplay concepts
As a gameplay designer, I defined how a character who cannot fight can contribute to the war efforts on the frontline.
The Boy, the protagonist of this game, has to carry boxes of supplies around in the trench and keep his allies topped up on medical supplies and ammunition to hold the line. Placing down boxes in a convenient spot allow the Boy to refill his pockets faster, but it may also act as an obstruction in getting around as well.
As the days go on, the intensity of the assault will increase. Enemies will come in greater number, shoot more precisely and throw more grenades. If ally characters are injured, the Boys will need to carry them to the medical zone or risk losing them forever.
Trench Layout Design # 1
Initial layout trench layout I designed. The back of the trench will have a med bay and armory that house infinite supplies of med kits and ammo boxes. The player can put boxes on the cart to quickly moves multiple boxes around the trench. (Note: The rail system is removed down in the development roadmap)
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The viewpoint icon marks the location where the player can zoom out and get an overview of the entire trench. However, this feature is streamlined to make the player able to zoom out at any given location.
Narrative Designer
NPCs creation and dialogues
I wrote a majority of dialogues the Boy had with NPCs in this game, as well as aided the artist in creating unique NPCs.
The process of creating NPC characters for me is by first defining who they are in summary. A disgruntled war veteran, a coward who was drafted into services, a criminal who was offered a chance at redemption. Then I start listing the progression of dialogue topics on each subsequent day of playing. After that, I fill in on the dialogue itself.
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In case of NPC characters die, there will be a grave with their personal belonging on top to remind the player of them. For example, the war veteran will have his trusty pistol resting on his grave. Some characters that know each other will also have special dialogues when their friends are killed.
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At the end of the game, a newspaper will sum up how the player performed in the game. For example, having too many casualties will make the headline say that it was the worst operation in history.