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Chimera is a turn-based action CRPG set in a mutated, Neo-dystopian world. Explore and learn about this distorted world through the eyes of Oscar, a lovable husky trying to find a new beginning when everything he knows changes forever. Find strange allies, fight to survive, and leverage the power to evolve and mutate beyond the limits of a mere house pet.
A demo for Chimera is available to download and play here.
Contents
Contents
Studio: Critter Knitter Studios
Team Size: 4
Primary Roles: Game Designer, Combat Designer, Technical Designer, Programmer.
Additional Roles: Audio Designer, Level Designer, Social Media Manager
Tools Used: Unity, Git / GitHub, Visual Studio - C#, Trello, Google Docs, Microsoft Suite, LinkedIn, Instagram, itch.io
Timeline: October 2023 - May 2024
Responsibilities Include:
Designing the gameplay loop, combat, exploration and interaction.
Designing and implementing dynamic audio to enhance the gameplay experience.
Designing, developing and iterating on the games UI.
Designing and balancing the combat encounters in the game.
Designing and iterating on the level design.
Assisting with writing the games narrative and designing the game to tell its story primarily through gameplay and some cutscenes.
Writing descriptions for items in the game and some small hidden pieces of lore for the photos.
Managing bug fixing, optimization, testing and quality assurance including implementing suitable feedback from playtests.
Prototyping the concepts of new ideas and the initial design.
Keeping up-to-date progress posts on the team's Itch Devblog and LinkedIn, and managing the teams social media pages.
Sourcing audio assets.
Mutation Design
Mutation Design
Goals for the Mutation System
Goals for the Mutation System
One of the major features I designed for Chimera was the mutation system. As the player progresses through the game, they will unlock new mutations that will change how they play the game and will reflect their play-style. Different mutations will give players new opportunities both during combat and when exploring the world.
I initially designed it for the player to have access to a variety of different mutations. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints of the project, there are currently only two available mutations to unlock in Chimera.
Obtaining Mutations
Obtaining Mutations
By defeating different types of creatures, the player can unlock and use abilities from those creatures. By combining different combinations of mutations, the player can build an arsenal of skills to use to their advantage.
Mutation in Combat
Mutation in Combat
I wanted each mutation to be extremely flexible, providing a variety of different effects during combat, both positive and negative.
Mutations grant the player active skills to use in combat, these use the Ability System that is described later in this page.
Mutations also grant the player stat changes and Trade-Offs, encouraging the player to build towards a play-style that suits them.
Exploring with Mutations
Exploring with Mutations
I wanted the world to open up to the player as they unlocked new mutations.
The system is designed to support a variety of mutations, but in the Chimera demo, there are only two playable mutations.
The Frogs Tongue which allows Oscar to pull distant high up objects towards him or pull over taller objects.
Tentacles which allow Oscar to smash down any barricades in his way.
Further Development
Further Development
While I am extremely proud of everything I worked on during this project, the mutation system is the most under explored feature of the entire game. I believe that the mutation system has the most potential for further development and iteration.
Compared to the other systems in the game, it received the least iteration due to a lack of time to play test. There is also not enough content available for the player to find their own build. Many of the ideas in this system are ideas I plan to explore in far more depth in a future project.
Combat Design
Combat Design
Goals for combat
Goals for combat
I had a few starting goals I wanted to achieve with the combat system, and a few long term goals to work towards reaching over the course of the project.
Short Term Goals:
Prototype a basic version of combat, with the following player actions and a very basic enemy AI.
Move (Does not end turn)
Attack
Ability
Defend
End Turn
Design a modular system to handle combat where it can be easily iterated upon.
Manually editable grid based movement system for combat.
Long Term Goals:
Combat is won using strategy and the environment, NOT by having bigger numbers than your enemies.
Multiple mutations that can allow the player to create different builds by having mutations affect stats and the options you have in combat.
Variety of enemies and enemy AI to encourage the player to be creative.
Focusing all iterations towards a fun and fluid play without breaking game flow or player immersion.
Combat creating tension to support the games narrative and darker atmosphere.
Combat System Concept
Combat System Concept
I began designing with a very basic flow chart for a players turn in combat which I designed in Miro. I created a version of a combat system focusing on available player actions.
I designed the combat system around player actions to allow for future actions in combat to be easily added to the list of actions, making future iterations easy to implement.
Prototyping the Combat System
Prototyping the Combat System
My priority when developing the initial prototype of the combat system was getting a simplified version of our end goal.
Inspired by the grid based world design of UnderRail, and combat similar to Fire Emblem or The Banner Saga, I developed a turn based grid combat system.
Thanks to my previous work on Kyle & The Tornak's in 2022, I had experience developing this kind of system.
Item System
Item System
After months of iteration, the game needed more interaction between the environment and combat. To fix this, I designed a very simple item system.
I did not want an inventory system as dogs cannot carry and access a backpack, but they can carry things in their mouth. I designed a simple inventory system where the player can hold an item in their mouth to gain effects.
Thanks to my design for a player actions focused system, implementing these items was extremely easy.
The player will find items around the level and may carry one item around in their mouth while exploring. In combat, their are three types of items. Consumable Items, Equipment and Items that give no benefit.
Pen and Paper concept of items
Consumable Items
Consumable Items such as this sandwich, would grant unique one time use abilities to the player.
EG: The sandwich in the picture gives the player the "Eat Sandwich" Ability, which heals him for 15 hp.
Equipment
Equipment Items such as the axe would change the players stats and basic attacks.
EG: The Axe increases the players attack by 25% while decreasing the players accuracy by 50%.
Unit Design
Unit Design
How the Units work
How the Units work
I had to figure out how I wanted the units of the game to work. What stats they needed and how I would store all of the data.
I decided to initially start with the following stats: Movement Speed, Max HP, Max SP, Attack, Defense, Magic Attack, Magic Defense, Critical Chance, Speed, Accuracy, Dodge.
All of the stat data for a unit is stored in a scriptable object, to allow for easy changes for balance.
For the initial prototype we gave Oscar the stats seen in this spreadsheet.
Stats breakdown
Stats breakdown
I wanted to create limitations on what the player could do to encourage creativity so I decided to add an SP point system to the game.
The separation between attack / defense and magic attack / magic defense, while very generic, allowed me to create different scalars for when the player used weapons and when the player used mutations.
Movement speed determines how many squares on the grid a unit can move during a turn, while speed would help it move earlier in the turn order.
The addition of accuracy and dodge was to facilitate players having the potential to create risk/reward style builds with low accuracy but high damage, or consistent high accuracy while sacrificing damage based on the equipment they chose to use.
Additional Unit Data
Additional Unit Data
Along with a units stats, there were a few other pieces of data that were necessary long term for our project.
Name of the unit
Portraits / Injured Portraits for the turn icon and UI
Level Configuration (How long it took a unit to level up)
Level Modifier (A modifier that increased a units stats based on their level)
Unit Stats (A reference to the base stats of the unit)
Abilities (Any abilities the unit had access to)
Default attack (Default attack damage if unequipped with a weapon)
Resistances and Weaknesses (Weaknesses to certain kinds of damage or effects)
Equipped Weapon / Armour
Min and Max exp dropped (To help the player level up)
SFX data for polish
While some of this data we planned to manipulate in real time for the player, enemy data would stay relatively static, so having access to many of this in the one location made it easier to change data during development.
Ability Design
Ability Design
How the Abilities Work
How the Abilities Work
There were two key goals when I was designing the abilities. Flexibility and Modularity.
In order to achieve this, I had the ability system separated from the rest of the combat system, allowing it to be accessed and used in a variety of circumstances.
Each ability needed the following key pieces of data:
Shape data to translate the shape of the ability during combat (Eg. a straight line, a circle shape, single target etc.)
All effects of the ability. Effects are a custom piece of data designed to allow extreme flexibility for the ability system.
The cost of the ability, both how much it cost and whether it cost HP or SP.
With this modular and flexible approach, it allowed me to reuse the abilities system when creating item abilities, as they function identically to standard abilities, which made development much smoother and faster.
Effects Subsystem
The Effects subsystem is what allows the abilities to be as flexible and as modular as they are.
Each effect is saved as a scriptable object, and multiple effects can be given to the same ability.
Each affect lists the following data:
What stat it modifies.
The operation being done (Add, Minus, Multiply, Divide, Add by percentage, Minus by percentage).
How many turns the effect lasts.
The value of the modifier.
What damage type if any.
If it can affect the caster.
These few simple pieces of data create a huge well of opportunities.
If I want an ability that does a huge burst of fire damage to all enemies, and then applies a smaller damage over time effect, I can do that.
If I want to have an ability that sacrifices the players health to gain a huge attack buff, while simultaneously slowly giving back a percentage of the health lost, I can create that.
Do I want an ability that can do both of these at once? The system can do that!
Abilities in Chimera
Abilities in Chimera
Eat Apple
Name: Eat Apple
Effect: Restores 6 SP to the user. Consumes the apple on use.
Costs: +6 SP
Damage Type: Healing
Eat Sandwich
Restores 15 HP to the user. Consumes the sandwich on use.
Name: Eat Sandwich
Effect: Restores 15 HP to the user. Consumes the sandwich on use.
Costs: 0 SP
Damage Type: Healing
Frog Lick
Name: Frog Lick
Effect: Targets 1 unit within 5 tiles of the user, dealing damage with a magic power of 5 + a melee attack.
Costs: -3 SP
Damage Type: Piercing
Tentacle Swipe
Name: Tentacle Swipe
Effect: Targets 1 creature within melee range. Dealing damage with a magic power of 8 + a melee attack.
Costs: -6 SP
Damage Type: Slashing
Throw Frisbee
Name: Throw Frisbee
Effect: Targets 1 creature within 7 tiles. Dealing damage with a magic power of 10. Consumes Frisbee on use.
Costs: 0SP
Damage Type: Smashing
Exploration Design
Exploration Design
Inspirations and References
Inspirations and References
To get an idea of how I wanted exploration to feel, I referenced various CRPGs and horror games. We began with a traditional top down camera inspired by Baldur's Gate 3 and UnderRail. This camera worked for combat, but took away from the atmosphere of the world.
Inspired by the older Resident Evil games fixed camera perspectives, I developed a similar camera system for Chimera. The fixed camera angles captured the tense atmosphere I wanted from Chimera.
Interaction
Interaction
How the player interacts with the world should be different than other games. I wanted interaction to feel intuitive for the player but I also wanted to differentiate Chimera from other games since you play as a dog.
The player will be slowly evolving as they progress through the game. How the player would then interact with the world should also change as they slowly evolve.
There are two core parts to how a player can interact with the world, smells and mutations.
Smells
Smells
To build our world and atmosphere, our game needed a lot of little ways to interact with and explore the world, but how can a player know what they can or cannot interact with? In many games, they solve this problem by adding a sparkle or loot beam, which you might have seen in games such as Dark Souls, Pokémon, or Diablo IV.
The environment the player can explore is too small to cover in loot beams all the time, but we still need to be able to guide the player.
By pressing Q, the player can smell the environment, highlighting anything interesting for the player with a trail of coloured smoke. Different colours represent different kinds of interaction, and will disappear after a short amount of time.
The player has full control over when they want to explore the world naturally on their own, and when they need a little nudge to make sure they haven't missed anything.
Postmortem & Future Development
Postmortem & Future Development
If your interested in a full project report written by myself and the team, you can read that for yourself here. The report doesn't include many of my own personal thoughts about the project, and was written in April of 2024.
Combat Rework - Our current combat system shows a lot of promise but needs much more iteration. I would like to redesign the combat system to allow swapping items during combat, eating food scattered around, moving and interacting with objects and implementing an action point system to allow the player to do more during their turn. These new features would encourage the strategic gameplay I wanted for Chimera.
Senses - Improving the smell mechanic to allow the player to smell for certain kinds of interactions or a specific item, and adding smell trails leading to the item. Dogs have incredible hearing and using that as a mechanic in the game could create some incredible gameplay opportunities. Gaining new senses and losing others through mutation which drastically changes how a player can interact with the world.
More content and variety - With how the games systems are currently designed, and how I would go about improving them, Chimera needs the time to add lots of variety to the enemies, environments, and activities. Unfortunately, adding more content is a large time investment, but I think that even as the game is now, if given more content it could be an incredibly fun experience.
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