Slime:Â a Dungeon Escape
Game Design/
Narrative/
Level Design
Slime: a Dungeon Escape is a Roguelike 2D-Platformer Inspired by games like Spelunky and Kirby. You play as Slimy, a Slime that works in a dungeon for an evil empire. After receiving free will through a potion Slimy wants to escape. You must find the exit of procedurally generated levels while picking up power-ups and combining them to aid in combat and platforming. I was part of coming up with the concept.
Trailer
Concept and Inspiration
The first thing that came to mind when working with the concept was the challenges we had chosen from a list of challenges which were that we should make a platforming game that needed to have power-ups, procedural generation and no HUD. The Idea of a slime that could change form that gave it unique abilities was something that was decided upon early on. When making the GDD the pillars were Exploration and Experimentation. I thought a way to deal with both was having the abilities be combinable with each other making for new ones with every combination. This made the player want to experiment with different combinations to see all the abilities while exploring the levels to find the base abilities to combine. The Idea for the power-up combo system was inspired by Kirby 64, where you could also combine powers. The way the levels were procedurally generated was inspired by Spelunky where the parts of the levels were handcrafted but are placed on a grid combining into a level that is randomized.
Story
In the game's story that I worked on, you are a slime trying to escape a dungeon and achieve freedom. This is deconstructing the common video game fantasy narrative of a hero entering a dungeon getting deeper and deeper until they can save the day. Here you are a slime which is a common fantasy foe which instead of trying to get deeper in the dungeon, is trying to get out of there and instead of having altruistic motives of saving someone or something, is motivated by a whim of not feeling like being there anymore.
Synopsis and aim
Backstory
Slimy was an ordinary slime who would spend his days protecting the castle from all the heroes who tried to conquer it together with the other beasts within the castle. But one day, when patrolling the alchemy lab, he accidentally collided with one of the shelves and absorbed the freewill potion. Now Slimy no longer wants to exercise his villainous duties and instead wants to go outside and smell the flowers. This, however, is something the Evil empire will not have and must stop at any cost before more decide to do the same.
Item description
The games power up items and their combos have descriptions written for them that usually have jokes connected to the items with some giving a slight glimpse into the games world.
All the designers of the project pitched in on what power-ups and their combinations should be. We created a table of how each and all combinations worked.
Example Power Combination
Melee (Sword)
+
=
Range (Bow)
Projectile Sword
Power Ups
Level Design
Brick
Breakable Brick
Power-Up, Coin or HP
Enemy
Start or Exit
Sprite of a level piece I made
Level piece in engine
The procedurally generated levels work in a 3x3 grid with each one of the nine pieces of the grid being filed with a handcrafted level piece. One of the programmers worked on a featured that made color coded sprites into level process making the design of them go a lot smother. One of the important aspects when designing the pieces was to have all the holes appear on the right locations so the pieces could always be entered. The holes would also get covered if there's no piece next too it so the player wont fall of the level.