F-Rank Alchemist

F-Rank Alchemist was developed as a stealth game, based on the game jam’s theme of shadows and alchemy. I interpreted shadows as representing being in the dark and being hidden, as well as secretly utilising dirty tactics to achieve a goal. Alchemy first led me to potions, but I then thought about hidden knowledge. When connecting shadows and alchemy together as themes, my mind went in the direction of magic and sorcery, which became the dominant aesthetic for F-Rank Alchemist. I thought the player character’s hidden knowledge could take the form of his adeptness in the dark arts and his skill in manipulating the shadows with magic.

As our team was very inexperienced with game development, much of our time was spent learning how to use Godot and Github. Designing and constructing the level with Godot's tilemap node felt fairly intuitive for me fortunately. I had roughly designed two additional levels, but they were cut as we needed the time to get the first level in a more polished state. Not much writing needed to be done beyond a basic plot outline for our team, and a tutorial prompt for the start of the game's level.

Making the game's soundtrack was quite difficult and time-consuming, as I had never made digital music before this project. I used different game soundtracks as references to help me better understand how to layer my composition. I wanted the soundtrack to sound ethereal and mystical to reinforce the magic theming for the game. Some tracks from the game Celeste were particularly helpful references for this style. I also tried to keep the soundtrack's tempo slow to reinforce the stealth aspect of the mechanics. I think my soundtrack did its job and was a solid first attempt at digital music.

After finishing development and having some time to think, I realised the objective of collecting items wasn't well connected to the rest of the game's mechanics, and more so just provided a win condition. Rather than collecting items, a better approach may have been creating a longer level with more complex obstacles for the player, placing a greater focus on players using their abilities to stealthily navigate the level.

Despite the shortcomings in my design, I was quite satisfied with the project considering the brief development period and lack of experience across the team in general.