The Last Son of Vorona
Level and Environmental Design
The first step we took was narrowing down our setting, we knew that we wanted to start in some kind of destroyed village, and end up in a castle. Looking around the real world for inspiration. We eventually settled on being centered in Romania, particularly Transylvania. With a Dark Ages aesthetic and taking our own spin on the local and mythos.
The largest inspirations for our castles architecture were Castle Bran (Dracula's Castle) and Castle Corvin, both in Romania, and our level and environmental design branch out from there.
First Deliverable Gameplay
At the end of sprint one, our first vertical slice was finished.
Over the course of the first sprint, we were able to start and refine our initial concept of a survival horror game into something with exceptional lore and worldbuilding, and refined gameplay mechanics. Refining our story to one of loss and betrayal, nailing down our Dark Ages aesthetic, and forming our core gameplay loop of Investigation, Exploration, and Combat. we have a good foundation of our block mesh for our entire game, as well as a fully fleshed out narrative, and the basis of our combat system and bosses.
Second Sprint
During this sprint, our team focused on refining core gameplay and laying the foundation for the game's visual and audio experience. We implemented UI elements, integrated SFX and music, and explored motion capture for character animations. Camera settings and post-processing adjustments enhanced the game's presentation, while VFX development—learning Niagara, creating particles, and designing a skybox—added to the visual fidelity. Progress was made on Act 1's level, including the full layout, environmental design, and village planning, supported by blockmesh textures and asset creation. Additionally, we prepared our Steam page and developed 2D UI concepts.
Our first Playtest
With our first Playable build of the game, we got the chance to have another student come in and look at our first Playable. While we knew a lot of the issues going into the playtest, it was good to have an outside perspective. And not only did we find even more issues, it helped us come up with more innovative solutions to improve the core gameplay loop and immersion.
Our Third Sprint
Our Pre-Alpha and Alpha State Sprints blended together as all of our goals from Pre-Alpha continued to be worked on in the Alpha. Continuing to finalize our Act 1 with our modeled and textured assets, vfx, and environmental storytelling props.
The End of Sprint Three
Alpha Gameplay
Pre-Beta
Our Pre-Beta was mainly spent spreading out our teams workload to focus on different aspects of our levels. With one focusing on optimizing and and adding post processing to Act 1, another focused on boss optimization in act 2, etc.
Pre-Beta Gallery
Pre-Beta Gameplay
Beta Stage
Our Beta Stage combines all of the most up to do date versions of everything in our game, including near final builds of levels, and implemented mechanics. Even with all of this work done it's weird how it still feels there's still so much to do.
