The Last King

Designing and developing a realistic documentary-style game about Dinousaurs, where you hunt down an Ankylosaur playing as the last T-Rex that ever lived.

Project introduction & goals

Being the lead designer & product owner

As the product owner and the only (lead) game designer, I was in charge of the following during the project:

• Project structure and planning

• Compiling all of the team's ideas, and from that creating a central design vision

  • Making sure everyone agreed on the vision

  • Designing and planning specific systems to be developed

  • Collaborating with the artists to get an achievable asset list & planning

• Communication between the team and Little Chicken

• Working closely with all team members, so they always knew what to work on

Throughout the project I scheduled and organized the meetings, and then worked in Notion and Miro to turn each meeting's conclusions into text and (one-page) design drawings. Then we also used Notion for SCRUM planning, together turning our design vision into clear actionable tasks that we planned per sprint.

It was a lot to manage, but I feel I managed it well during the project, since all these tasks are connected to each other. But, there were times where I received help with the planning and keeping track of all the deadlines, which I am very thankful for to my team. Overall, I had great practice using SCRUM and managing projects through this experience.

Design & development process

This assignment for a prototype was really tough from a game design perspective. The team and me could imagine a realistic T-Rex battle, but an environment puzzle that was 'true to nature', seemed very hard to design. Little is known about dinosaurs after all, and our research told us the T-Rex mainly smells, navigates and hunts. But I thought of a different way the game could work and have puzzles: playing as a young T-Rex surviving to eventually become 'The Last King'. We imagined having loads of navigational puzzles through tough terrain and dodging other big dinosaurs. Becoming older and stronger throughout the game perhaps also had a satisfying progression in narrative and gameplay. 

But after discussing our ideas with the client, it was clear they saw the main selling point of the game to be about being a big strong realistic, adult, T-Rex. With this conclusion we decided to fully focus on having a true to nature battle with another dinosaur, with a fully polished T-Rex and visuals. We thought a lot about how to integrate the 'environmental puzzle' aspect they wanted, but they had only vague ideas about this, and in the end they really just seemed to care about having a realistic T-Rex experience. 

Another question that lingered was about other seemingly conflicting requests: they wanted battle gameplay, where you feel in control, but it also to feel like a documentary where you are watching and learning. After discussing this with them we felt it was good to test out which emphasis would fit the best. That's why we split the team to create 2 prototypes for an A-B test. Team A was the 'gamey' prototype, leaning more towards battle gameplay mechanics over documentary-style, and team B was team 'cinematic' where it was more about the narrative but most of what you did was walking. After a week of the teams working on these 2, we tested the finished prototypes with the client. When playing the prototypes, they preferred the cinematic prototype, for it being the true documentary style game they envisioned. But they also appreciated the gamey prototype, and did want a battle system like the one we imagined for that one, just with no UI and minimal input. This was valuable feedback to continue.

So with these tests and research complete I had a lot of thinking to do about the final design. After a couple of meetings and drafts we eventually settled for a T-Rex battle with an Ankylosaur. Since this is a dinosaur that, from our research, stood a chance in fighting the T-Rex with it's armor and powerful tail club. And the T-Rex would have probably used a strategy of tipping it over in a battle with it, which made for interesting battle design. So eventually I designed gameplay where you use your controls to intimidate and 'herd' an Ankylosaurus towards a cliff, while dodging it's attacks. The T-Rex controls, especially walking, would also be implemented to feel as slow and heavy as possible, to really feel like a giant beast. We felt this battle narrative made for unique battle gameplay that makes you feel like a strong T-Rex, with the actual battle strategy still having a bit of that environmental puzzle aspect the client wanted.

Since the client wanted a really polished product, I knew from previous projects that the scale had to be kept to a minimum. So I worked with the artists and developers to create a short narrative in a relatively small environment, kept mechanics simple (walking, feint attacking, roaring). Also we decided to have pretty much all assets besides the T-Rex be gotten from online, since all of the work could then go into having a really realistic and well animated T-Rex. After all the planning, during the development process, I acted as a generalist and helped out wherever it was needed: 

• Creating, finding and implementing SFX and music.

• Writing the script for the game narrative.

• Developed systems for the T-Rex behavior during cutscenes.

• Implementing all cutscenes, from the storyboard created by one of the artists.

• Animating the Ankylosaur

Project conclusion

I am really happy with the finished product, as was the rest of the team and the client. I think it was a tough design challenge for an unconventional game idea, but out of lots of prototyping, research and client communication came a concept that fit the design goals well. Controlling the scope also really payed off, because in the most important aspects really did feel polished, from the short but interesting narrative and gameplay to the awesome environment and T-Rex the artists put together. In the end we to present our game at the HKU exposure, where lots of people were coming to look and play our game. Designing gameplay to be accesible and be focused around a very cinematic experience was something I hadn't done before and wasn't very comfortable in, but in the end seeing people of all ages being able to play the game, understanding and enjoying it, was a magical experience. And working with this great of a team, a learned so much and had tons of fun myself.