Game Design, Portfolio, Portfolio - Game Design

Lament of Kyoto

Posted by Robbin Lieverse on

Blast away endless waves of Yokai in this Japanese themed roguelite.

Game overview

  • Reverse Bullethell, Unity
  • Japanese themed, horror
  • PLAY THE GAME (WINDOWS)

Work Overview

  • My job: Game/Level Designer
  • Vision Holder
  • Started at pre-production.
  • Full ownership of all design features.
  • Lead team meetings and first line of communication with stakeholders.
  • Managed outsourcing of 3rd party artists and developers.
  • Created all facets of design, from KITs, core game mechanics and UI/UX, to documentation and map designs. Full ownership of all design features.

Project Details

Work done on this project: Game & Level Design, recruitment and management of outsourced talent, Steam Page backend.

I created UI/UX flows, UI designs, level blackouts, feature design, documentation and analyzed playtest data as a basis of my iteration process.

After analyzing our competitors and looking at our team setup, I settled on the Key Innovation Targets (KIT) below feeling they allowed us to best utilize our strengths, while also creating an exciting new spin on the genre. The result is a game that strikes a nice balance between staying true to genre-defining features, while still bringing our own unique twists.

Another challenge for this project was handling outsourcing. As a small studio we had very little budget but still had the need to outsource some of our work. I did a lot of the recruiting and managing of the outsourcing talent. Most of this related to the art on our Steam Page, trailer and website.

I also wrote the Steam Page and handled the entire backend of it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2178640/Lament_of_Kyoto/

KITs:

Japanese setting and Edo-artstyle:
Lament of Kyoto is the only game within the genre that has Japan as its setting and theme. Competitors mainly use Western themes such as zombies, monsters, and the Middle Ages. We are the only ones to use Japanese folklore as the foundation and inspiration of our game.

3D Graphics:
Unlike competitors, Lament of Kyoto is a 3D game. We only have one 3D competitor, the rest are all 2D, or of extremely low quality.

Freedom in gameplay:
While our competitors only offer one upgrade path per weapon, we offer several to allow the player to experiment freely. We also innovate by creating unique gameplay elements for each map to give each level a strong and unique identity.