Game Overview

Gothic Nights is a 2D Metroidvania with the player playing as a blood-fueled robot exploring a dark, corrupted ship full of religious and technological marvels. GN draws heavy inspiration from games like Ender Lilies and the 2D Metroid series for its gameplay, with Dead Space and Warhammer 40k influencing the story and lore.

Itch.io link: https://project-psyclone.itch.io/gothic-nights-sins-of-ichor

Development

I joined this project midway through its development, with only Level 1 finalized in design at the time. My work on it consisted of the following:

• Draw out my ideas for level 2 in Photoshop.

• Discuss the ideas with team members, primarily the writer and director.

• Greybox the final selection on Unity.

• Script enemies into the level.

• Utilization of environmental assets to enhance the level's aesthetic appeal.

• Playtest and resolve any design or technical issues.

The Idea

My entire philosophy behind the design of this level was to guide the player in a way that incentivized the use of newly acquired mechanics without being overly explicit about it. Level 1 has the player unlock a double jump, and Level 2 has the player use that new ability in order to traverse most areas. At the start of the level, the player is kind of pushed to go right (like most sidescrollers do). If they go through, they will quickly find themselves blocked off at the top of a tower-like jumping section. A locked door and a breakable wall will be on the way. A subtle objective is presented immediately. They would then go left and see another closed door, with verticality available yet again. Eventually, they’d find some ducts at the top of the level and turn on the power to open the door. Going through the door would reveal the area’s boss: a mechanical frog with a shotgun in its mouth. After beating that boss, the shotgun is earned and then used to break down two doors to leave the arena, and then break some walls that lead to the rightmost area of the level. The right has a switch that would open up the path to level 3, however, there is a more difficult version of the boss that can be done to upgrade the shotgun too. This is completely optional. Finally, like with any Metroidvania level/world, there are also tons of secrets found in this level. Some are fully hidden, and others simply require tools the player may not have. Specifically, I drew a lot of inspiration from the 2D Metroid series of games. Metroid Dread being the most prevalent inspiration between those games. Out of all the official 2D Metroids, I feel that Dread is the one that succeeds the most in environmental storytelling and guiding. Super Metroid is the one that follows it, in my opinion. Both do an incredible job of subtly guiding the player through levels in ways that make the player think they figured it all out themselves from scratch.

The Lesson

The biggest lesson I took from this project was how to use level design to subtly handhold players. I feel handholding is an inevitability in games nowadays. That is not bad, by the way. Handholding can be crucial in making some games playable from the outset. However, making that handholding obvious can be frustrating at times. For this project, I aimed to learn how to make the handholding more subtle, similar to Metroid Dread and its predecessor, Super Metroid. I feel I did a good job too, because almost everyone who playtested the game followed what I said in the “The Idea” section to the letter. It was very satisfying! As for the biggest challenge, definitely coming up with the overall route the player would take and what would lead them through it. It’s important for the main path the player takes to feel natural in its progression, if you want to subtly guide them through it to begin with. Finally, something I’d change of this level would be the optional boss arena. It’s already more difficult because of the fact that it’s 2 bosses, but I also made the arena smaller, and that’s overkill, in my opinion.

Final Version