Akira's Sin
Skills Developed
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Level Design
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Combat Design
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Creating Documentation
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Project Management
Main Roles
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Lead Designer
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Scrum Master
Overview
Akira's Sin is a game created over six weeks while collaborating in a team of six, split evenly between designers, artists and programmers. My team decided to make a game inspired by Hotline Miami and the classic Grand Theft Auto games which featured fast-paced combat and a drivable vehicle.
Weekly Scrum Meetings
Every week, we would meet up and discuss our progress for the week. My job as scrum leader was to record each team member’s progress and assign them a goal to complete for the next week. Alongside this, if a member’s goal was not difficult to complete in the week, I would assign them a stretch goal to try and complete after they were done.
Combat Design
A large focus of the project was the combat encounters that the player would need to complete. Our initial plan for the game allowed both the player and enemies to use the same weapons profiles, giving the player the opportunity to learn how weapons work before obtaining them. We also assigned a different weapon to each enemy type to help the player prepare for combat encounters.
Shotgun
Pistol
Sub-machine Gun
Heavy Pistol
Objective Design
During objectives, enemies would spawn in at set thresholds of progress. For example, a capture objective would spawn enemies after the player had held a zone for enough time. Each enemy that could be spawned was given a weight, allowing us to tune how difficult an objective was supposed to be.
The player would need to drive their car through the city and complete objectives to access the region's boss. In the current version, there are two main types: Elimination and Capture.
Level Design
In this project, it was my job to create the main level that the player would explore. Since we wanted the game to encourage the use of a drivable vehicle, the level had to take place in a dense environment. By using Cities Skylines 2, I was able to concept a potential layout for the level, as seen on the right.
After this was created, I worked with the artists to develop this plan into a functioning level in Unity.
Below are screenshots from stages in the level's development.
Early grey-box version of the level
Initial plan for the main level
Final version of the level