Kimball Brooksby - Game Designer - Compound

Enemy Behavior

The Problem:

For Compound we wanted to use the enemies to solve two problem: First, "How do we make the environment feel dangerous?", and second, "How do we guide the player to progress through the level?"

The Process:

To answer these, we split the problem into two enemy types that we could use to solve them. For the first question, we needed an enemy that we could reuse to create areas of varying danger, while for the second, we needed one that the player could use as a landmark to navigate the map.

The Solution:

The two enemies I worked on were the Shambler and the Wanderer. The first one shambles around within given radius and is weak while alone, but can be used in groups to create scaling barriers. The second one is really strong and patrols between specific points, giving the map a specific flow.

CompoundShamblerShowcase.mp4

Inventory & Interaction System

The Problem:

In order to foster the atmosphere we wanted, the game needed a core mechanic that would consistently provide the player with meaningful decisions and be the main source of dramatic tension.

The Process

To start, we wanted to work with the idea of combining items. In testing though, being able to combine every item with every other item proved to large for our scope and limiting combination to just a base item and a modifying item didn't give the player any interesting decision points.

The Solution:

In the end, I implemented a system that allows the player to combine duplicate items into a single, stronger version, which works with the inventory's limited space to create dramatic tension by letting the player choose between multiple uses or higher potency of items.

CompoundCompoundingShowcase.mp4

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