Julien Lebon
Game designer
PROJECT – POSITION
Game prototype for Polytech’Nice – Project Manager / Product Owner / Game designer / Lead Level designer
DATE AND DURATION
2016/2017 – 6 months
DESCRIPTION
Onikami is an action-stealth game using light and shadows at the core of its gameplay.
In Onikami, you play as Bansu, a demon of shadow. Light is your main opponent, it makes you weak, but you can unleash your powers in the shadow. Investigate to discover why the war started between Onis, demons of shadow and Kamis, gods of light.
MISSIONS
Game design : Game concept
Create an original game requires a lot of work, here we had a game that uses shadow as a core gameplay feature. Every feature had to work with the idea of shadow. And designing an action-stealth game requires to chose constantly between … action and stealth.
Game design : Game Design Document (InDesign)
In student projects, game design document is more a tool to fix on paper every game decision and to communicate with the rest of the team than a classical document. It requires a lot of flexibility since it’s harder to make a student programmer read your documentation than it can be in the industry !
Lead Level Design : Beginner’s training
Create levels and teach about level design are 2 different things. As a lead level designer, I worked with 2 students to show them how to design levels, how to build them, create level design patterns, avoid beginner’s mistakes, and to act as a designer but think as a player.
Project management : Project decisions
I had the opportunity to use my experience in video industry to lead the project. And make decision to have a good prototype even if we didn’t have a lot of ressources. Work with programmers, artists, communication was a really interesting experience.
Project management : make game design and art
We were lucky to have a very talentuous artist with us. But since he hasn’t worked on action games before it was important to show him our vision.