Gastrovania : The Inner Battle

"Embark on a visceral journey within the very essence of a monstrous organism, navigating its intricate anatomy to confront and annihilate its ultimate control center—the brain—in a heart-pounding first-person shooter experience like no other."

During my final year at Fanshawe College, I teamed up with fellow students to tackle the ambitious project of developing a game inspired by "Doom," centered around the core mechanic of first-person shooting. Fully embracing this challenge, my primary responsibility within the group was to design and develop the game's first level.

Genre: First Person Shooter

Engine: Unity

Team Size: 5 People

play-through of the finished level

Production process

Level Layout

This was the initial level layout that I planned on using to create this level.

Starting from the left side you would make your way around the walls which teaches the player the controls for movement.

This would lead to teaching the player how to jump over a gap, this gap is also used to prevent the players from backtracking through the level to areas they no longer need to reach.

Once they land on the other side they are introduced to an environmental hazard (Puss Ball) that gets showcased in a cutscene allowing the player to see what it will do throughout the game.

They will then use the jump that they previously learned to make on top of an obstacle where they will need to slide through an object that is partially blocked forcing them to use the new mechanics they were just taught

After they make it out of the slide section they will go into another jump over a gap into where the player gets to pick up their first weapon in the game (Pistol)

This next section is where the player can use the pistol on some basic enemies as an intro to 1 of the enemy types throughout the game.

Finally, the player will encounter a mini-boss which needs to be defeated to move onto the next level in this case it was a giant worm

First Block Out

From the drawing to the first block out not much changed in terms of the design layout.

The first Major thing added is the intro cinematic of the player waking up

The next thing to be modified was the section after you learn to slide through the object there was a large wall you needed to slide under to get the pistol. That was moved to after you get the pistol to allow the player to have some breathing room to look at what's to come and test the weapon before being thrown into a hoard of enemies.

After getting the gun you had to take on 6 enemies and this was too many enemies for the space you were playing in, I noticed I was running in circles a lot to kill them all so this was something that would be changed later on.

Weapon Work

Since this game takes place inside a body there are a lot of fleshy objects the player will be interacting with so I wanted to add a bullet impact that can resemble the impact of flesh with green goo that sprays out of it

This was the pistol recoil initially

This was the pistol recoil after being tweaked

Started to add more effects to the weapons. The muzzle flash produces actual light that can illuminate your surroundings when you shoot, Animations for the pistol so when you shoot the slider moves as if it shot

I noticed the weapons can clip through objects so by rendering them on a separate camera and overlaying the image onto the main camera I was able to prevent the pistol from clipping through objects

Level Iterations

The first iteration, the main focus was on the functionality of cutscenes and enabling the player's ability to slide

The Second iteration, the focus was to start populating with more finalized assets

The third iteration, after playtesting I noticed the little hump in front of the container made it hard to het up, so I took the container door to use as a ramp to help guide players in the right direction

The fourth iteration, this is how it sits right now, baked the lighting, added post-processing and populated with more assets

Level Iterations

The first iteration, the main focus was functionality of picking up the pistol from the weapon crate

The second iteration, I started to dress it up with more assets

The third iteration, after playtesting I noticed people didn't see the weapon pickup on the gun crate

The final iteration, I added a light to the weapon to make it more noticeable, allowing the players to know it is something you can interact with

Level Iterations

The first iteration, the main focus was to work on the functionality of the enemies and pistol

The second iteration, the main focus was getting the puss ball functionality working and reducing the enemy's numbers from 6 to 3

The final iteration, after conducting playtests, I observed that the shipping container appeared dark to players and could easily be overlooked. To address this, I incorporated a lantern inside the container. This addition helps illuminate the hole in the side of the container, guiding players to recognize it as the intended pathway.

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