Laborated
Concept
Laborated is a first-person stealth game where the player navigates through an interconnected underground research facility in order to find specific objects that are to be found in the building while making sure not to get spotted by any guards.
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Engine: Tengine
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Platform: PC
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Team: 9 People
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Duration: 5 Weeks
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Method: SCRUM
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Location: PlaygroundSquad
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Official Page: Click Here>>
Background
The game was made as part of the education at PlaygroundSquad Higher Vocational Education, located in Falun, Sweden. It was made using the in-house game engine known as Tengine, developed by Tension Graphics. We were 8 students working on this project, with an addition to Lukas Markström who provided us with appropriate Sound Effects and Music.
My role for this project was as a game designer, where my tasks included the following:
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Mockup Level Construction and Design (Using Maya)
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Project Management
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GDD Documentation
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Quality Assurance
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Gameplay Design
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UI/UX Design
The Process
The following text will explain a bit about the process from a designer perspective, where I will go through some of the challenges we faced and what tasks I occupied myself with.
We decided early that we would build the entirety of the level using only modules, to be able to not cause too much strain on our artists, who could quickly build it by snapping them all together.
Above are pictures of the level design layout, the mockup level and the final level for easy comparison. The level design layout (first picture) is made by co-designer Torsten Lareke. Below we have the mockup level (created by me) and the final result shown in perspective.
The purpose of the mockup level was to measure and test the scale of the props, and since the character in the game also was a small girl, this also included finding a fitting height for the camera. We were going for a tense and intrusive setting and feel and adjusted the gameplay accordingly. For example, we made the character shorter to emphasize the feeling of being small and defenceless.
Here is a chart I made for the walking patterns of the guards. The guards have two different walking patterns, which we like to call "Back-and-Forth" and "Looping paths". Guards who have the Back-and-Forth behaviour stops to turn themselves around when they have reached the end of their path, while guards with the looping behaviour never stop.
We wanted to have as few guards, covering as much of the level as possible. This was mostly because we wanted to keep a balance between making the player feel insecure and pressured throughout the game to keep them on the move, while also maintaining a touch of realism to the guard's movement. The player can easily figure out the guards' patrol pattern, but most of the time, they will be too occupied looking for the items on the list.
We thought about a way to make the player know their position without adding an additional UI element. What we settled on was physical maps displaying the layout of the facility and the current position of the player placed on four separate locations in the level (See above pictures). This way, the player is more susceptible to getting lost and is required to do a lot of exploring in order to win the game.
Credits
Art: Julia Wawrzyniak, Lucaz Flodemark, Adam Forsberg, Simon Padellaro
Programming: Adrian Rondahl, Fabian Fernlund
Design: Samuel Kärvemo, Torsten Lareke
Sound/Music: Lukas Markström
