KINOTASHLA | Kaleb Brooks

KINOTASHLA
PROTOTYPE

Play as a telekinetic prisoner escaping from his ruthless captors. Master your telekinetic abilities and break free from the chains that bind.

Kinotashla is a Sidescroller action platformer centered around a unique movement/combat ability.

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Team: 5 | Role: Designer, Programmer, Level Designer | Timeline: 14 Weeks | Tools: Unity, Jira, Miro, Bitbucket

DESIGN PILLARS

Physics Based

All object movement is handled via unity Physics2D.

Newton's 3rd Law

All telekinetic abilities have an equal and opposite reaction on the player.

Fast action puzzle

Puzzles must be able to be solved quickly as to not halt pacing.

GAMEPLAY

LEVEL DESIGN

TELEMETRY TRACKING

In order to analyze and create better experiences for our players, we created a custom telemetry hook that allowed my team to take a deeper look at the levels through player positions during specific events.

This heatmap details player deaths. The higher volumes often correlate to harder areas.

This heatmap tracks the player's position every second. The denser areas represent areas where players often get stuck.

LEVEL 5

After my position changed to Lead Level Designer in our team, this was the first level I worked on.

Level Overview

The whole level is built off this idea of verticality. It tests the players newfound movement skills by forcing the player to actively thrust themselves upward.

First section

In this first section, we teach, test, and challenge the player by letting them use the movement system to launch themselves upward. We also give them the affordance of these bridges which act as checkpoints. Stopping the player from falling all the way to the bottom of the pit.

First turret

This is the first appearance of a turret in our game. I positioned it in a way where we can convey the following to the player:
- Crates block bullets
- Crates can destroy turrets.
- Turrets have a vision cone that detect the player.

Vertical Shaft 2

In order to test and challenge the player on turrets, I used the same vertical shaft idea, but also included turrets that the player needed to maneuver around.

Final Stretch

These last 2 sections are meant to create a sense of momentum and challenge towards the end of the level.

The horizontal hallway is filled with turrets and crates to use as cover. However, the crates also act as a traversal challenge.

The final vertical shaft is an exercise in the player's understanding of the movement system and provides the player with a sense of achievement.

LEVEL 7

This was the last level of our prototype of which I was the Lead Designer on. This level was to focus mainly on non-linearity. I think the level flow in this level was the best I was able to pull off during my time on the level design team.

First Section

I open the section with a very confined camera view, then open up the entire area to allow the player to dismantle the security. Giving the player a sense of freedom they haven't really experienced up until this point.

Splitting paths

This room splits off into two paths and provides a simple combat challenge.

Lower path

This, the easier path to get to provides a combat and movement challenge.

Upper path

This section provides some light traversal and an easy challenge. Since this is the harder path to get to, it rewards the player with a lighter challenge. Something that someone playing the game a second time might appreciate.

Final Stretch

This section really opens up to the player. It allows them to approach the objectives from either side of each platform and was designed with this idea of freedom and non-linearity in mind.

PROGRAMMING/TECHNICAL DESIGN

During our earliest design iterations, we wanted the player to be able to pick up and drop crates so they wouldn't have to fiddle around using our "throw" mechanic for more methodical movements like placing a crate on a pressure plate. I came up with two solutions we thought we'd be able to implement in unity. We actually went with the first option, which soon developed into its own very unique mechanic reminiscent of the hammer from Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.

With our high speed character controller we wanted to implement a system for some kind of melee attack. I decided it would be best to have this melee system be built around achieving a high enough speed. This details exactly how this system would be implemented, including a state diagram for our animator.

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