CONTEXT 

​ Shadowed Garden was produced in two months in an end-of-the-year project. We had to make a 2D platformer on Unity to validate our first year of Game Design in ESMA.

PRODUCTION 

​During Shadowed Garden’s production, I was in charge of everything, from A to Z! Whether it is the mechanics, the programming, the narrative, the sounds… Everything was made by me!

​I could try every different domain and familiarize myself with what I want to develop today: Game Design, Level Design and narration.

Game Design

​In Shadowed Garden, the players have to go through a level filled by enemies. At first, they can’t defend themselves. Still, as they progress in the garden, they can find and pick flowers that will give them different capacities: a double jump, a dash and a way to shoot at enemies at the end.

​I wanted the players to feel unsafe at first, putting them in a situation where they have to flee at first. However, as the game goes by, they gain ways to defend themselves and overcome obstacles on their way.

Level design

​Shadowed Garden level was complicated to create. Firstly, because I started working on it way too late, but also because I was trying really hard to fit with our world’s logic.

​Why would a garden have floating platforms? Why would the players be forced to go in one direction only? These kinds of questions parasitized my workflow, and it can be seen in the final level. ​

​Despite everything, the level’s intention always was the same from the beginning of the production to the end. The idea was to go deeper and deeper down the garden, going into the depths of it. Then, the players would arrive in the ditch where everything is chaotic, empty, dead. It’s there that the players encounter the level’s boss. They have to beat it before climbing back up and leaving the ditch.

Narrative design 

​For the narration, I wanted something subtle. The goal wasn’t to yell at the players that they were fighting Angsty’s ​inner demons but to suggest it. This subtlety was included in particular with the flower choices: an anemone, a hyacinth and a lily of the valley. 

​Each of these flowers has its own signification and message. The anemone means healing sadness and pain, the hyacinth means comfort and vitality and the lily of the valley means resurgence. This follows Angsty’s healing process.

CONCLUSION

​Shadowed Garden was hard to develop because of the deadline and the huge amount of work necessary in the production. Nonetheless, it was truly interesting thanks to this work diversity.

​I’d love to recreate Shadowed Garden’s level to upgrade and make its navigation smoother and far better -because right now, there’s a lot of obvious flaws in its level design that I am aware of!