Game Overview

Gothic Nights is a 2D Metroidvania with the player playing as a blood-fueled robot exploring a dark, corrupted ship full of religious and technological marvels. GN takes heavy inspiration from games like Ender Lilies and the 2D Metroid games for its gameplay, with Dead Space and Warhammer 40k inspiring the story and lore.

Itch.io link: https://project-psyclone.itch.io/gothic-nights-sins-of-ichor

Development

I joined this project mid-development with only level 1 finalized in design at the time. My work on it consisted of the following:

• Draw out my ideas for level 2 in Photoshop.

• Discuss with team members the ideas (this included mainly the writer and director).

• Greybox the final selection on Unity.

• Implement enemies into the level.

• Use of environmental assets to decorate the level.

• Playtest and resolve issues with any design or technical problems.

The Idea

My whole philosophy with the design of this level was to still guide the player in a way that incentivized the use of newly acquired mechanics without clearly telling them. Level 1 has the player unlock a double jump, and level 2 has the player need to use that new ability in order to traverse to most areas. At the start of the level, the player is kind of pushed to go right (like most sidescrollers do). If they go though, they will quickly find themselves blocked off at the top of a tower-like jumping section. A locked door and a breakable wall will be on the way. A subtle objective is given right then and there. They would then go left and see another closed door, but a verticality available yet again. Eventually they’d find some ducts at the top of the level and turn on the power to open the door. Going through the door would reveal the area’s boss: a mechanical frog with a shotgun in its mouth. After beating that boss, the shotgun is earned and then used to break down two doors to leave the arena and then break some walls that lead to the rightmost area of the level. The right has a switch that would open up the path to level 3, however, there is a more difficult version of the boss that can be done to upgrade the shotgun too. This is completely optional. Finally, like with any Metroidvania level/world, there are also tons of secrets found in this level. Some are fully hidden and others simply require tools the player may not have. For this specifically, I took a lot of inspiration from the 2D Metroid series of games. Metroid Dread being the most prevalent inspiration between those games. Out of all official 2D Metroids, I feel Dread is the one that succeeds the most at environmental storytelling and guiding. Super Metroid being the one that follows it, in my opinion. Both do incredible jobs at subtly guiding the player through levels in ways that make the player think they figured it all out themselves from scratch.

The Lesson

The biggest lesson I took from this project was how to use level design to subtly handhold players. I feel handholding is an inevitability in games nowadays. That is not bad, by the way. Handholding can be very important in making some games playable to begin with. However, making that handholding obvious can be frustrating at times. So for this project, I wanted to learn to make that more subtle (like Metroid Dread and Super Metroid before it). I feel I did a good job too, because almost everyone I had playtest the game followed what I said in “The Idea” section to a T. It was very satisfying! As for the biggest challenge, definitely coming up with the overall route the player would take and what would lead them through it. It’s important for the main path the player takes to feel natural in its progression if you want to subtly guide them through it to begin with. Finally, something I’d change of this level would be the optional boss arena. It’s already more difficult because of the fact it’s 2 bosses, but I also made the arena smaller and that’s overkill, in my opinion.

Final version