Welcome To The Apocalypse
Itch.io link: https://theburkester.itch.io/wtta
Welcome to the Apocalypse follows the story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who were brainwashed by a mysterious entity known as "The True Apocalypse" into doing its bidding and causing the end of the world. Death, the eldest sibling, manages to free herself from the control of The True Apocalypse and goes on a quest to free her siblings and take down this fake entity, since it is attempting to destroy the world before the world should be ending.
I worked on Welcome to the Apocalypse with my group, Team Blue Dragon, for our 2020 end of year project. It was originally conceived as part of a much larger project that consisted of two separate games, one Visual Novel that saw the Horsemen being summoned to the mortal realm and one Tactics game that saw the aftermath of the Horsemen's summoning, that would intertwine with each other on a narrative level, but the idea (and the other group) were both eventually scrapped, and focus shifted solely onto just this game. The story also shifted, placing the cause of the end of the world onto another entity that used a form of mind control to force the Horsemen to cause the end of the world.
With this, the team decided to severely reduce the scope of the game overall. Since each Horseman was originally conceived to have a separate area in which they would fight, along with a boss fight at the end of the game with The True Apocalypse themselves, would have been more work than our small team could have handled in the amount of time we had, especially after losing an artist. Thus, the decision was made to cut the game down to a Vertical Slice instead, allowing us to focus more on making a much tighter and more fleshed out singular area instead.
The story in the Vertical Slice itself follows Death, having come to her senses some time ago, and Pestilence, recently also freed by Death, taking on Famine, who was living in a lavish mansion. Famine had been stealing resources and life for himself, leaving the area around him in disarray and decay while his mansion and grounds were flourishing. This led to some interesting artistic and design decisions through the juxtaposition of life and lack of resources, through things such as the assets themselves, the level design, and even the post processing changing lighting effects depending on whether you are viewing the outside or the inside of the mansion.
My role on the team was Lead Producer, as well as some Level Design and a bulk of the Writing and Worldbuilding.
Production, especially early, went quite smoothly, but began to decline slightly as time went on. The team was consistent with morning standups and ensuring that everyone was up to date on the running Schedule document we were using, but the later stages of production had communication issues that resulted in certain assets and game aspects not being done or being waited on due to confusion as to who was doing what and what was done. This is mostly due to the HackNPlan and Burndown Charts being used less often in those early stages, but communication quickly picked up closer to the midpoint of the project.
I will admit, Production on this project could have been a lot better. Since the scope of this project was the largest I'd undertaken at the time, plus the fact that this was the longest project I'd worked on and it was all being done remotely, I began to fall off a bit as time went on. Producer responsibilities became more split as time went on, with the Lead Designer taking up some work in my stead where I made mistakes or failed to do something properly. The project acted as a great learning experience on not only how to run a team of our size (Twelve people, which was more than on Wave RiderZ), but how to do so remotely. The team was luckily strong enough that even through the issues listed here, we managed to power through and make something really cool.
On the other hand, the writing and worldbuilding went really well. The Horsemen were characterized and their relationships worked out early into pre-production. Each was meant to be distinct and grew as time went on. Switching to a Vertical Slice did mean that War's overall role was less fleshed out, but even still, he had his place in the group. Death was written as the stern eldest sibling, very no-nonsense and serious, but with a slight undertone of protectiveness for her family. Famine the second eldest was smarmy and greedy, as well as very arrogant and narcissistic (The favourite character trait among the team). Pestilence, the second youngest, is snarky and smug, always ready to get jabs in on the people around her wherever she could. And War, the youngest, had a kinder and friendlier disposition that was contrasted with more periods of rage and anger.
The characters being the Four Horsemen also allowed for interesting design choices for their abilities. Being a tactics game with a limited cast, each needed to be doing something different in order to make them both unique and useful. Death deals high damage to her foes, being able to kill some nigh instantly. Famine buffs and debuffs, stealing riches and giving them to his allies (When he's feeling generous). Pestilence supports and infects, using bacteria to harm and heal. And War gets into the action right away, wanting people to hit him.
My main involvement with this was helping the other designers set up the world initially and working out those concepts for the Horsemen as characters and playable units, before moving onto the dialogue itself. Dialogue appears as you would see in a Visual Novel, carrying over the aspect from the previous dead project. Coupled with a variety of character poses from our 2D artist, and I was able to capture a number of, albeit smaller, character interactions between the siblings, as well as a full three person dialogue between them at the game's conclusion. I tried to give careful consideration to not only how the characters acted as individuals, but also how they played off and reacted to each other. My one regret with doing a Vertical Slice is not being able to do more writing.
Despite the hiccups, the project was an absolute blast. I had a lot of fun and learned so much, and had a great time with my team. If you're interested, the link to the itch.io page can be found below.