Cryptid Chronicles
Cryptid Chronicles is a single-player simulation game where the player takes control of Thaddeus Tankston, the world’s first cryptozoologist as he undertakes a daring journey to the lair of a unique creature.
Marketing
- Youtube Trailer
Gameplay Design
- Player tools design
- Game loop design
- Character controls
- Quality Assurance
Technical Design
- Blueprint Mechanics
- Magical Footprints System
- Subtitle System
- Animation blueprint
- UI implementation
Scrum Master
- Daily standups
- Hold pipeline planning
- Structure Kanban & Miro
- Sprint planning
- Agile workflow
My Contributions
Find Clue
Inspect & discover
Follow tracks
Game Loop
Explore the area and use the map for navigation.
Search the area and inspect the cryptid.
Fill your journal with findings connected to the cryptid.
Tools
Clues
Four types of clues connected to four types of activities.
Example: Glowing mushroom clue activates tracks to an activity where you see the cryptid pollinating.
Whenever the player has successfully inspected a specific activity by looking at the cryptid while it's performing, all the clues that leads to those activities will become deactivated. Otherwise, they will activate again after the activity and become interactable again.
Successful Inspection
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Scratched tree
Scorched earth
Poop
Construction Script
The footprints uses construction script to easily place the splines in editor.
Variables to change the distance, size and how big the empty space should be where there are missing footprints.
Empty Space
The design for the empty space was to give the player a bit more challenge. Instead of blindly following the tracks, we put empty spaces for the player to use the spyglass and look further ahead to find them again.
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After the player has interacted with a clue a pre-placed footprints will glow up and lead to an activity spot. When the player comes close enough to the activity spot and trigger the spawning zone, the cryptid will show up and the footprints will disappear.
Footprints Activation
Footprints
Tools
Being lost is part of the game. Simulate the experience of a 1920s cryptozoologist by using the tools given.
Map in game
Map & Compass
Runestones
When the player interacts with a runestone, the area surrounding the runestone gets discovered on the map.
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The map is very similar to the map in World of Warcraft where the map gets updated when a player walks into a new zone.
Initially the idea was to have unique landmarks on top of vantage points that you would need to spot with your spyglass. Then the map would get updated with the landmark and the area around it.
This got scrapped as we didn't have time to create the unique landmarks and instead chose to have runestones that you go up to and interact with. Having runestone also gave the player a clear pattern for progression.
Inspiration
Iteration
Discovery
The journal gets updated whenever the player discovers something new. Whether it be footprints, a clue, a runestone or most importantly, the cryptid.
The journal is the key component in completing the game. Whenever the player has successfully inspected all four of the cryptids activities, the game is considered finished and the player will be sent back to the tent for a final cutscene.
Game Progression
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Immersion
The journal is the key component in Cryptid Chronicles. In the sense of a simulation game, it's the most valuable possession that the cryptozoologist has.
Journal
Immersion
The spyglass lets the player look further into the distance to plan ahead their route and spot for clues or footprints.
Inspect
The spyglass is used to stay at a safe distance from the cryptid to inspect it without being detected.
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The use of the spyglass became ambiguous as the development process went further. It was initially thought to be used to discover unique landmarks to document on the map and to also help navigate on top of vantage points.
Something that was missing from the game that would allow the spyglass to become more useful was a thick fog. It would encourage the player to use the spyglass more diligently. But due to deadlines we couldn't get the fog into the game.
Instead we removed the ability to do map discoveries on runestones with the help of spyglass as it became unmotivated to stand on one place and discover the whole map.
Ambiguous use
Spyglass
Voice Lines & Subtitles
Scrum
I big part of this project was spent planning and scrumming in Miro. I held daily standups, planned the upcoming week, held retrospective, quality assured mechanics and updated the Kanban board.
To do
WIP
Daily standup
I created this board for every week where the team members wrote what they did at the end of each day. This was to make the daily standup a little smoother because you could follow along with the post-it's. It also made remembering what you did the day before a lot easier.
Retrospective
I held a retrospective at the end of each second week where we could bring up what we thought went well and what could be improved.
It was encouraged to speak freely and be open and honest so we could improve ourselves and the project. Some of the stuff we discussed here really helped with the sucess of the project.
Kanban
We started out using Trello for the sprint and task planning. We created a backlog with user stories and then prioritized some of the user stories for the sprints and made tasks for them.
Later on we moved onto Kanban in Miro instead because the Trello would get messy and not everything could fit into one screen as you had to scroll to the side. Moving to Miro was something that would help me to plan out things as well as have more freedom in Miro.
User stories
Something that didn't really click for the team was user stories. We kept them almost through the whole project but they were rarely helpful. As you can see on the picture above I put titles for the user stories and the user stories on a post-it beside it. Then sort the tasks under those user stories.
At the end of the project we moved on to something that we called "Rapid Kanban Style", where we added tasks and completed them as we went. We still sorted them under the user stories but the user stories became a secondary priority in the process.