Design Process Excerpt
Volition went through multiple different iterative stages, as we prototyped multiple gamelevels, tested out different survival mechanics and designed multiple gameworlds which looked totally different from one another.
In Volition you are tasked to find items to survive (e.g. oxygen cannisters) and to find out what happened to the previous expidition crew. One of the issues we had during playtesting was that a lot of vital items were easily overlooked, whilst some areas containing these items weren't even found at all. We concluded that the player needed more guidance within the gameworld.
My part in adding more player guidance came through adding a 'scanner' system. A concept in which player were guided to important areas in the game through visual "HUD" like elements, with important items which were generally overlooked had their own visual elements added aswell (although these are only visible in a short range).
Before we got to this version however, we had the idea to solely guide players to imporant areas only. This through a compass like design, with which you were guided in the general direction of an area through arrows. Although this had an intersting visual aspect, it didn't work with vertical levels. Something we found out after we started playtesting in our vertically oriented 'pillarworld'.
This previous version (see gifs below), also didn't fix our problem of players not identifying crucial items spread through the gameworld.
The above mentioned mechanic is only small example of iterations which were constantly made on a design level. Within these iterations I helped execute the vision of the designteam, whilst also adding my own ideas when realising the mechanics in-game.
