XENOCIDE
A top-down, arcade crossfire and one moist bloodbath. You'll have to plough through endless cities, ghostly graveyards and even a hillbilly trailer park whilst avoiding volatile contraptions of carnage.
A part of a team of 10 I was both the producer and sole designer. This meant creating the core designs for the product and it's mechanics and game balancing. Creating the levels from paper to block outs and then final detailing. As the producers I was leading the team, presenting the product to stakeholders and demoing the game at events such as Insomnia (UK) and Nordic Game (Sweden).
Xenocide was also given praise in double page spread in Pelit Magazine Finland's largest gaming magazine.
This levels main focus was the train and how it could impact the gameplay. During cooperative play especially when it passes through the map if players were not coordinated they could be left on either side of the tracks and therefore unable to reach all of the objectives as they were locked to that area by the camera view. However the same train would offer benefits from dropping explosive barrels and running over enemies on the tracks.
The graveyard level was the simplest in it's mechanics and why the game starts with this level. It's a simple arena and the only additional mechanic is that the players can run up to the shines and pray to them which would release additional power ups.
The carnival level was inspired by Zombieland and uses different theme park rides to help each player defeat their foes. The rides including were the ferries wheel (top right), drop top (bottom right) and the revolving carts (bottom left). However they would need to turn each ride on manually including the power generator (top left) otherwise the park would shut down, including the lights.
This level was designed as a city escape level and was an endless run through the city. For this level I designed several different city blocks which could be procedural generated in any combination to create an endless level. To make it seem more natural each building and prop could be randomly generated from a pool of objects for each block.
The Alien Headquarters is designed so that players must navigate through 6 different rooms in which portals will randomly spawn and then be destroyed. The challenge is that the doors between the rooms will become blocked of by energy barriers in which only enemies can enter. The player must choose to either wait for the barriers to change or run through the open path.
The game had a total of 18 power ups split into 3 categories, offensive, defensive and weaponry. Players could have any combination of these and were split into Tier 1, 2 and 3 dependent on how powerful they were. I also designed there to be 3 main weapons, 2 special weapons and 3 grenade types. Overall there is a large amount of customisation and options for players to choose from to help them survive.
Xenocide has several different enemies there are a few examples given above. Each enemy has a unique mechanic which tries to make more varied combat. For example the Scarab's which should be killed from a longer range before they charge or the spewers which leave poison on the floor and a stake which launches towards the player when they die. On top of the enemies above there is also Grunts, Projectile Drones and Big Brains which shoot lasers from their eyes, because why not!
