Victor Lundblad - Game Design Portfolio

Technorun was our first year game project at the University of Skövde. It's a music themed platform runner set in a humorous sci-fi world. The game was nominated for Best Execution in Audio at the 2015 Swedish Game Awards gala, but it did sadly not win the first prize. I was the creator of the original concept for the game and during the course of the project I worked as game- and level designer as well as project lead. For most people on the team this was the first big game they had ever worked on as a group. This meant we had to learn some important game development lessons the hard way. For me as a project leader, I found out that good communication and a solid structure within a development team is the key to success in the long run.

The initial game concept that I had envisioned was a runner game, where the players in-game performance would affect the levels soundtrack and layout. Due to technical limitations and the fact the the school project only lasted for 10 weeks, we had to downscale and rework the game. What we ended up with was platform runner game where the player had to keep ahead of the music at all times. This was represented by a giant playback line in the form of an energy beam that constantly chased the player. If he/she would fall behind too much certain layers of the music would be gradually cut out leaving the game with a crippled soundtrack and eventually ending the game. To me this was a fair compromise as I don't think we would have been as successfull with the game if we hadn't made these changes.

The game tells the stoy of how the two heroes Technoman and Cybergirl (the player chooses wich one to play as) has to save the city of Technopolis from the evil villain, Mutezart. Mutezart has tired of hearing the same old electro music coming from the citys party district and one day he decides to mute all the music (by some unknown technology). Technopolis falls silent and the player has to save the world by un-muting all the music.

Here's a trailer that our artist Maxine made during the project. It shows some gameplay and will hopefully give you you a better idea of what the game is about. (link is curently broken, trying to fix)

Trailer redovisning.wmv

We tried our best to make a fast-paced 2D sidescroller that made the player feel in control of the main character. We had a discussion about whether we should make the game into a more traditional runner game, where the main character would move at a set speed and have to avoid obstacles along a set path. In the end we stuck with the original idea that allowed the player to move freeley in either direction but urging him or her towards the goal using the playback laserbeam.

I feel like this was the right descicion for the game as it allowed for more intresting gameplay options. As you can see in the trailer there is a section where the player has to jump backwards in order to progress. This can be very stressfull for a player, especially if they're behind, so by using this element sparsly we could control the pacing of the levels.

I was responsible for the level design in the game's second level (not shown in the trailer but I'll include some screenshots) which hade castle like theme to it. It's suppose to be the the inside of Mutezart's tower which is visible in the background i the trailer. You can also see the skyline from inside the tower in the screenshots below. The one one the left shows Cybergirl about to pickup a power up and the one to the right is her going up a jump booster.

The hardest part of creating level design for a game where every level was based on a song with a fixed duration and where the main character has to move constantly, was that the levels became very very long. It came to a point where I almost ran out of ideas for the designs. I'm unsure if I would have been able to create any more really original levels if the development had continued. We should probably have had som sort of procedural generation for the atleast som parts of the levels as players spent so little time in each area. We even tried that for our boss fight but ran into some problems with the code and never got to implement it before the deadline. If I were to redo the game I think a mix of pre designed parts and procedural ones based on the music in the song would fit the game best.

In the image on the left the bass clef button (purple) has just been activated, thus lowering the grey wall in the playes path. On the right side the laser has caught up with the player and she's trying to get ahead by dashing.

If you would like to try the game out or have any questions about the game or the development process feel free to contact me!