Wayward Shoals
Responsible for: Game Design, Level Design, Prototyping, Cutscenes, Sound FX
Wayward Shoals is a prototype/demo created by a small team at Paladin Studios that I was a part of. I can't share that much about the project online. But I can discuss it in detail in a call.
In short:
It is a mystery adventure game where you play as Rascal, an energetic and inquisitive dog. Joined by your human companion Matilda, you’ll embark on a supernatural journey that will take you through the mysterious islands of Wayward Shoals.
Game Design
We ended up with 3 game pillars to focus on.
Unleash your inner dog:
The game had to feel like you are playing a dog. We made sure the mechanics aren't too far detached from the real world to support this feel.
A big part of achieving this dog feel came down to having a human companion ("owner").
Other activities included: barking at everything and everyone, chasing a creature of chasing a smell, jumping and climbing on top of (not to high or too narrow) objects and surroundings, digging up items and things from the ground, biting into things and of course eating lots of strange stuff.
We also added sneaking, not per se the most dog-like, but being small compared to humans made it stand out as a good core mechanic.
A thing I love about the barking is that it was a button that actually produced a sound in the game world. So unlike a talk button in most games in which a character goes into talk mode, we have a character that makes noise on command with a certain intent. It feels really dog-like to bark at someone hoping the receiver understands what you want.
The mechanic that served most as a main mechanic was the Sense mode. In Sense Mode the dog could see things that happened in the past. Making it a perfect mechanic for solving detective like puzzles. But in sense mode the player also had a heightened hearing, allowing the player to hear things and obtain hidden information.
Dynamic detective duo:
The emotional connection of dogs and humans felt like it had to be captured by this game. So we focused on having an owner. (funny thing, without an owner you would immediately feel like a homeless dog).
The owner is your quest giver, hint giver and friend. They can of course do things that you as a dog couldn't do and vice versa.
Proudly walking back to your owner with an item that the owner can interact with (and you can't) is one of my favorite aspects of the game.
Another favorite is small in nature, but its the fact that your owner does all the talking to NPC's and you as a dog are just there, listening and waiting.
Both feel very fun and very unique to me.
An uncanny adventure:
The last pillar is more theme and world building, and gameplay would come out of that. The main thing connected to this is the dogs ability to see/sense ghosts. Which also made for a great dynamic duo mechanic with the dog seeing things that the owner couldn't.
Level Design
The levels consists of small and medium sized islands. We found it to be a very good match with the semi open world gameplay of the game. Creating natural boundaries and fitting the theme of the game.
We went through many iterations of island layouts, scales and elevation differences. Getting better each time, with easier mental maps of the place, clearer natural waypoints and sightlines and a good balance between traversal difficulty and traversal time between key locations.
Development and Key Learnings
Some key takeaways from the development of Wayward Shoals:
- Arrange more playtest sessions with externals
- Find a good balance between what should polished and what can be more prototype-y
- Defining the theme, story and world helped to find the right mechanics