Royal Skedaddle

Royal Skedaddle is a third-person stealth game developed as a university project over the course of 6 months. The player is put in control of Dina, the young heiress to the throne, who wants to escape the castle and explore the world. She must evade the guards while securing an escape route.

Semi-Open World

There is no defined path for the player to take, having the entire level, though small, to explore.

Multiple Endings

With this freedom, the player can decide to escape the castle through two different ways, each with its own individual quest-line to finish

Magic Rock

To help escaping the guards and traverse the level, the player is equipped with a special rock, allowing her to teleport to wherever it lands.

Initial Research

Researched already existing stealth games, where the level is openly explorable and has multiple exits/endings.

Tried having a range of indie titles and some from bigger studios, to study how each of them tackled different challenges.

The four biggest influences were:
- The Hitman franchise
- Commando: Behind Enemy Lines
- Not the Robots
- Roombo: First Blood

Also looked at real world castles and palaces

As inspiration for level design and room layout

Also to better communicate with my artist about the artistic vision and model designs going forward.

Gameplay Concept

Core Loop

Would answer the immediate, moment-to-moment gameplay.

Wanted the player to approach each room as a puzzle, trying to figure out the best way get to the next room.

To help with this I also created a mock design for a level to get a better understanding of the possible challenges the player could face.

Gameplay Loop

Would dictate the larger overall gameplay, during a game session.

Essentially an extension of the core loop, that would help design and balance the content that isn't based on the moment to moment action.

In tandem with the Core Loop, these were the back bone that helped flesh out all other systems, from the level design to enemy movement and even what content to keep and what to cut.

Level Design

Stealth maps shine due to their maze like structure, but with clear landmarks for player reference.

Initial room layout mockup, before thinking of assets or even guard patrols.

The first few iterations had rooms too close, without enough unique geometry and the map needed more horizontal length.

Found a version I though had a lot of potential, and made a clean version to get a better idea of the layout.

MockUpLevel2

MockUpLevel3

MockUpLevelClean

MockUpLevel2

1/3

Ingredients and Assets

Ing_Dina

Ing_Wardrobe

Ing_Dinning

Ing_Dina

1/5

To better communicate with both my programmer and artist I compiled the assets we would need in an ingredient list.

Provides the artist the correct measurements for the assets as well as a visual indicator for the model itself

Provides it's behavior (things like movement speed, what to do when it sees the player, ect.) to the programmer.

Helps on the design front, since I can establish the sizes of assets early on, and design everything accordingly.

Enemies and Objects

Started placing them on the previously designed layout, adjusting its proportions to the assets size.

Iterated several positions and paths for the guards to have, along side their vision range.

Lastly, I made a color-coded danger map, designating the most dangerous areas on the map. My aim was to have the further away sections from the player spawn to be the most dangerous.

EnemyMockUp1

EnemyMockUp2

EnemyDanger

EnemyMockUp1

1/3

Quest Design

There are two quest-lines within the game, one which is introduced instantly to the player, and another that is discovered as the player explores the map. This was to always give the player an objective, but also give them the opportunity of choosing which of them they want to finish first.

I also decided to make the start of the second questline at a place the player is required to pass through as they complete the "main" quests, so that they don't accidently miss that exit completely.

The Vase Case

This is the first questline the player will be introduced to.

By collecting pages of the captain's diary, the player can discover his most prized possession, a vase, and break it moving him from his post which is blocking the exit.

This quest starts as soon as the player starts the game

The quest utilizes the inventory system to read the captain's diary entries.

Tried to utilize most of the map in the search for the captain's pages.

This is made easier by the in-game map, with an icon signifying where the player is and the room names.

Brewing Up a Storm

While completing the "main" quest, the player will enter the Buttery, where they start the second questline

A drunk guard strikes a deal with the player: If they can brew him a powerful drink, he will let her pass through the door.

The player then follows a recipe left on the kitchen counter.

It has the description of the items needed, and in them the player can figure out where the ingredients are located.

My aim was to make a quest that feels like the player has to genuinely figure out where the ingredients are, and not feel like a fetch quest.

Testing

After conducting tests with our target audience, there were a few key points that needed improving, some which we were able to implement and some that we could not:

People got lost. Due to to miscommunication between the artist and I, we ended up with assets that looked too close to each other, leading to rooms that were similar. We did not have time to change this before the project delivery date.

The wall occlusion effect was too jarring. We added a blue circle around where the wall disappear so the player could keep track of the character behind walls. However this circle ended up being too much, and so we changed it to just having the wall disappear normally.

The guards were easy to evade. Due to time constrains the AI needed to remain somewhat simple and it led to having guards that maybe weren't the most attentive. The AI got a significant upgrade after the tests, but still remained simplified.

Apart from one or two small bugs these were the main complaints we received during tests.

What I learned

This was my first foray into 3D. I was presented with challenges that I had never though about and had to learn a lot of new skills in the process:

Use verticality. Something I felt was missing from the final design was that the Z axis was almost unutilized.

Make a block-out early into development. In this project I was too focused on making the theoretical perfect map, when I believe I should've started testing things earlier.

Team communication is one of the most important aspects. There were times during the development when my team and I were communicating perfectly and as a result, the things we were doing were coming out great. However there were other times where we weren't in the same page which resulted in sub-par results.

Better documentation writing. I believe that the Design Documents (GDD) I wrote improved by leaps and bounds during this project.

Unreal Blueprints and 3D modelling.

Pedro Soares - Game Designer

Royal Skedaddle

Initial Research

Gameplay Concept

Level Design

Stealth maps shine due to their maze like structure, but with clear landmarks for player reference.

​

Initial room layout mockup, before thinking of assets or even guard patrols.

​

The first few iterations had rooms too close, without enough unique geometry and the map needed more horizontal length.

​

Found a version I though had a lot of potential, and made a clean version to get a better idea of the layout.

Ingredients and Assets

To better communicate with both my programmer and artist I compiled the assets we would need in an ingredient list.

Provides the artist the correct measurements for the assets as well as a visual indicator for the model itself

​

Provides it's behavior (things like movement speed, what to do when it sees the player, ect.) to the programmer.

​

Helps on the design front, since I can establish the sizes of assets early on, and design everything accordingly.

Enemies and Objects

Started placing them on the previously designed layout, adjusting its proportions to the assets size.

​

Iterated several positions and paths for the guards to have, along side their vision range.

​

Lastly, I made a color-coded danger map, designating the most dangerous areas on the map. My aim was to have the further away sections from the player spawn to be the most dangerous.

Quest Design

The Vase Case

This is the first questline the player will be introduced to.

By collecting pages of the captain's diary, the player can discover his most prized possession, a vase, and break it moving him from his post which is blocking the exit.

This quest starts as soon as the player starts the game

The quest utilizes the inventory system to read the captain's diary entries.

Tried to utilize most of the map in the search for the captain's pages.

This is made easier by the in-game map, with an icon signifying where the player is and the room names.

Brewing Up a Storm

While completing the "main" quest, the player will enter the Buttery, where they start the second questline

A drunk guard strikes a deal with the player: If they can brew him a powerful drink, he will let her pass through the door.

The player then follows a recipe left on the kitchen counter.

It has the description of the items needed, and in them the player can figure out where the ingredients are located.

My aim was to make a quest that feels like the player has to genuinely figure out where the ingredients are, and not feel like a fetch quest.

Testing

After conducting tests with our target audience, there were a few key points that needed improving, some which we were able to implement and some that we could not:

People got lost. Due to to miscommunication between the artist and I, we ended up with assets that looked too close to each other, leading to rooms that were similar. We did not have time to change this before the project delivery date.

​

The wall occlusion effect was too jarring. We added a blue circle around where the wall disappear so the player could keep track of the character behind walls. However this circle ended up being too much, and so we changed it to just having the wall disappear normally.

​

The guards were easy to evade. Due to time constrains the AI needed to remain somewhat simple and it led to having guards that maybe weren't the most attentive. The AI got a significant upgrade after the tests, but still remained simplified.

Apart from one or two small bugs these were the main complaints we received during tests.

What I learned

This was my first foray into 3D. I was presented with challenges that I had never though about and had to learn a lot of new skills in the process:

​

Use verticality. Something I felt was missing from the final design was that the Z axis was almost unutilized.

​

Make a block-out early into development. In this project I was too focused on making the theoretical perfect map, when I believe I should've started testing things earlier.

​

​

Better documentation writing. I believe that the Design Documents (GDD) I wrote improved by leaps and bounds during this project.

​

Unreal Blueprints and 3D modelling.