Daniel Clark of IGN describes holistic design as "harmony between mechanics and aesthetics." This is something that's been important to game designers for decades, but the term holistic design is only just beginning to gain popularity. In creating The Last Sprite, holistic design is something I strived for.
Design Pillars
Early in The Last Sprite's development, I'd created several pillars to guide everything that was to come.
Pillars:
A rolling main character
An abandoned fantasy world
Elemental puzzles
Restore the world
I used these pillars in everything, from the design of mechanics and the game world, to the UI and selected sound effects. This helped ensure every part of the game felt cohesive, as a single out-of-place element could break a player's immersion.
A Rolling Main Character
The movement of the main character was the most important thing for me to get right. As discussed in another part of this portfolio, I spent a lot of time designing and refining the moveset, resulting in a character that was fun just to navigate the world with. Now I had to design everything else around that moveset...
Design of Character
To explain that the character could only roll, I encased my main character inside a sphere of vines that rotated as the player moved. I added a dry grass sound effect that played during movement (volume increasing with speed), and I added mention of the sphere of vines to the narrative intro, explaining its narrative purpose.
Design of World
Various aspects of The Last Sprite's world were designed with rolling movement in mind. Because the player's movement speed is much higher than it would be for a normal walking character, I added extra distance between objectives, giving the player the opportunity to enjoy moving through the world.
I added collectible gems to guide the player from ruin to ruin. Collecting gems in quick succession causes the pitch of the collection sound to get higher, rewarding the player for mastery of movement, and encouraging greater use of the Super Roll ability.
Certain gameplay elements were made with the size and shape of the character in mind. Access hatches are only just big enough for the character to roll through, and the camera then zooms in to follow the player through narrow passages. Likewise, buttons and tutorial rings are circular, subtly telling the player how to interact with them.
Tutorial rings, buttons, and access hatches are all designed to suit the player's size and shape.
The design of platforming sections (covered in more detail in my level design article) revolved around the player's jumping, rolling, and grappling abilities.
Progress
Finally, rolling through the world is imperative to the player's progress through the game.
An Abandoned Fantasy World
This pillar is concerned largely with the aesthetic and narrative of the game, and led to me designing a fantastical world devoid of other creatures.
World Design
I chose to include two biomes in The Last Sprite: forests and ruins. These felt like the most natural biomes to include in a fantasy-themed game, as players are familiar with these thanks to Zelda, Fable, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and myriad of other series.
The feeling of fantasy was further heightened by inclusion of a starry, purple-tinged sky, warm lanterns, glowing gems, and a generally stylised aesthetic. Rounding out the fantasy feel are element-themed puzzles, 'magical' sound effects for things like collecting gems, ambient forest sounds, and ominous ambient ruin sounds.
Narrative
I chose to have the world abandoned due to scope limitations, as adding NPCs and enemies would have taken me beyond my 3-4-month development window. The abandoned nature of the world is given narrative purpose in the game's introduction, where it's explained that the world's former inhabitants committed their own species to extinction through reckless use of the world's resources.
UI & Menus
The combined natural and fantasy theming of the game's world also comes through in the design of the UI and menus. All UI elements are designed with a nature theme. Menu buttons are made from wood, while the player's health bar is comprised of leaves.
Progress
Once again, this pillar is integral to progress, as it's impossible to complete the game's objectives without spending time exploring the world.
Elemental Puzzles
As the name suggests, this pillar concerns itself largely with the puzzle sections of the game, but there were wider implications to having puzzles based around elements...
World Design
I've covered the design of puzzle areas in a separate section of this portfolio, but there was more to consider than just the puzzles themselves. Using fire in puzzles meant I either needed to clearly differentiate 'puzzle fire' from decorative or lighting fire, or use fire for puzzles and nothing else to ensure the player never got confused. I chose the latter option, instead using lanterns as lighting where I might otherwise have used flaming sconces.
Design Affordances
As fire is a commonly used element in games and popular media, there were affordances I could take advantage of to wordlessly help players understand what to do with fire. Chief amongst these was using unlit braziers to show players where they had to deposit collected fire elements.
Progress
As with the other pillars so far, interaction with this pillar is imperative to progressing through the game.
Restore The World
This is arguably the biggest USP differentiator between The Last Sprite and other games of similar ilk.
World Design
The player restores colour to areas of the world by destroying machines, and much of the world is designed around these machines. Each set of ruins is built to house a machine, and the forest between are there to provide juxtaposition against the machine areas.
Around each machine is a desaturated area that will sap the player's health, and puzzles and platforming sections are designed around these desaturated areas to provide varied challenge.
Many of the world's visuals landmarks are provided by neon pink cables or visual effects that highlight the location of untampered machines.
Narrative Design
The game's narrative revolves around this pillar, with the game's main objective being to destroy machines and restore life to a dying world. This pillar is present in the game's intro and outro narratives, as well as most in-game dialogue.
Menu Design
All of the game's menus are built with this pillar in mind too. The main menu shows a small section of the game world that switches between 'restored' and 'desaturated' every 10 seconds. Likewise, hovering over menu buttons with the mouse causes them to become desaturated.
Progress
As mentioned, The Last Sprite's main objectives all tie directly to this pillar, so it is essential to the player's progress.
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