Spite: Sunborne
A top-down action RPG

"You were sacrificed by priests who have turned to blasphemy. You are given new life by the sun god and fight your way back through the jungle and city to smite their new gluttonous god."

Our group logo

About project

This was the most ambitious project yet. Inspired by Diablo 3 we were tasked with creating a top-down action game with abilities, leveling and fleshed out combat. We decided early that we did not want to focus on story and to rely only on environmental story telling which was a fun aspect of the design of this game.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The team:

2 Level Designers
2 Game Artists
2 Animators
2 Technical Artists
4 Game Programmers

Production time:

10 weeks half-speed = Around 200 hours.

Engine:

Unity as Level editor
Game Engine made by the team

My Contribution:

Level Designing all levels together with LD colleague, switching ownership.
Planning world layout
Scripting world events
Lighting all scenes
Member of Player task force
Member of Environment task force
Member of Enemy task force

OVERVIEW

GAMEPLAY

Features

For the general gameplay features we took a lot of inspiration from our reference game. Making use of the barbarians abilities and features from Diablo 3 and making some adjustments as to how they work for our game. We also used general health and healing concepts from the Diablo series.

Checkpoints

Checkpoints placed about along the path. If the player were to die they would respawn at the last checkpoint they activated.

Health

A simple health system acting as a health pool which can be depleted by enemies and healed up with potions.

Rage meter

The rage meter acts as a pool that gets depleted when the player uses certain abilities and can be refilled by using your normal attack.

Healing potions

Healing potions are used for healing up the player. They are infinite but on a cooldown.

GAMEPLAY

Abilities

Normal Attack

Spear throw

Leap

Stomp

Spin

Earthquake

GAMEPLAY

Enemies

We decided upon 3 types of enemies and elite versions of those enemies. We tried to mimic the typical enemy types you would see in Diablo but with our own twist and art.

Melee

Simple melee enemy. Medium amount of HP and low damage.

Horde

A horde type enemy. Low amound of HP and low damage but large numbers.

Ranged

A ranged caster type enemy. Low amount of HP and high damage.

Elite

Elite enemies are stronger version of all enemies with more HP and damage than their regular versions.

GAMEPLAY

Death Hog - Final boss

Attacks

The boss has three attacks which it can use. It has access to 2 of them at first and the third one is unlocked when the boss enters it’s second phase.

• Normal attack – The hog swings his axe towards the player.

• Charge – If the player is too far away from the boss it will charge, an indication of their direction is shows.

• Fart attack – During it’s second phase the boss can use an AOE attack if the player is close to them. This attack stays on the battlefield for a short while and will damage the player if they stand inside of it.

Boss Phases

The boss hard three phases indicated by the arrows on his healthbar.

Phase 1

Has access to the normal attack and the charge.

Phase 2

Gets access to the fart attack.

Phase 3

Access to all attacks and is generally faster.

Reference

We used The Butcher from Diablo 3 as a reference for our bossfight. For example we used one of the abilities, the charge.

Design

The design for Death Hog takes inspiration from our reference The Butcher in that it is a big brute-like enemy with large swings and attacks. We then added our own style to it based on the theme of the game to make it our own.