BLOODSEEKER

Bloodseeker is a metroidvania that I made in 2 weeks with Austen Kinney for the Metroidvania Month game jam. As the primary developer, I was responsible for the design, code, art, and project management. Austen created the music/SFX and helped with playtesting and brainstorming. We won first place and received positive reviews from players.

Download & Play

Design Pillars

Exploration

Combat

Progression

These 3 facets of the gameplay experience fed into my 3 design goals (fantasy, engagement, depth) so I established them as the pillars that I designed Bloodseeker around.

Exploration

Fantasy: being set loose in a sprawling world is what players have come to expect from a metroidvania.
Engagement: discovery is a powerful and rewarding experience that the player can engage with by charting their own path.
Depth: the world is filled with obstacles which require the player to find the means to overcome. This results in the world being layered and nonlinear like a maze and provides depth to the exploration.

Bloodseeker featured 6 areas and over 100 rooms to explore. Players could easily get overwhelmed if given access to the full map right from the start, so I locked the player in smaller sections of the map and slowly opened up the world as they progressed. Importantly, I also locked the previous section behind them, allowing players to initially focus all of their attention on their current area. Eventually, the player will come full circle, returning to the first area. Upon their return, all of the locks are removed and the player is free to explore the entirety of the map.

Requiring the player to navigate an expansive 2D space and remember which obstacles can and can't be overcome can easily become taxing and frustrating.

To mitigate this frustration, I implemented an auto-mapping system that players could reference. I also created a fast travel mechanic that the player can acquire when they've explored most of the map to reduce tedious backtracking.

To fully encourage and empower the player to explore, they can sequence break the game. This allows them to tackle obstacles in nearly any order they desire, if they can find the road less traveled.

Combat

Fantasy: in Bloodseeker, the player embodies a vampire, a powerful monster. Empowering the player to defeat other monsters will fulfill that fantasy.
Engagement: skill-based combat offers near-endless engagement for players.
Depth: combat is based around making moment to moment decisions with opportunity for optimization, allowing the player to master the game through skill.

A key ingredient to combat that remains fresh after hours of play is variety in the cast of enemies and encounters.

I designed the enemies of Bloodseeker like pieces on a chess board, each serving a role in combat.

An example is the Revenant and Bile Bat. The Revenant is a tough melee enemy that tests the players timing. The Bile Bat flies away from the player and spits projectiles. Combining these enemies into a singular encounter results in a unique problem for the player to solve.

During development, most of my focus in combat design was devoted to the 9 bosses the player could face.

Each boss was designed to present new and unique challenges as well as build upon previous enemies to test the player's mastery over defeating them.

Scroll down to the Boss Design section of this page for a detailed example of how I design bosses for Bloodseeker.

Progression

Fantasy: player expectation of the metroidvania genre is to provide the power fantasy. Offering a means for the character to grow stronger fulfills that fantasy.
Engagement: progression systems take a flat experience and make it into one with highs and lows where the player feels under or over powered at various times. This balances the pacing and increases engagement.
Depth: the player can invest in mechanical progression which opens the design space to expand the gameplay and create depth.

For Bloodseeker, I locked progression behind the most challenging parts of combat and exploration: bosses and secrets.

The power ups were designed to feed back into either combat, exploration, or preferably both. A good example of this is the Bat Dash. The dash enhances their horizontal movement capabilities and gives a brief period of invincibility. These properties make the dash a valuable tool for the player in both exploration and combat.

Boss Design: Weaver

The Weaver is found in The Web area, which is designed to instill fear and flip the power fantasy on its head by making the player feel weak and vulnerable. Because my goal was to maintain the emotional theming, the Weaver is designed to be the most intimidating boss in the game. The Weaver is massive compared to the player and constantly creeps towards them throughout the fight to make the player feel claustrophobic.

Being the halfway point of the game, the Weaver is the most difficult mandatory skill test. The Weaver will spit webs and venom projectiles at the player and stab at them with its front leg. In addition to the Weaver itself, there are 3 egg sacks that will spawn Weaverlings if the player does not destroy them every so often. This forces the player to juggle dodging projectiles, jumping to attack the Weaver's head, and destroying the eggs while avoiding the legs.