Low Battery is a first-person action runner, hardcore, survival game where vision is limited and so is everything else. As a robot power is important to you, unfortunately, it is in scarce supply after you crash land on an alien planet. Manage what you have carefully, if you run out there is NO coming back.
To assist you on your journey you also have an assistive vision drone who will help you greatly on this planet with his super cool lasers that specializes in pushing giant spiders away. Your drone can see clearly in any darkness and can easily fly about, unfortunately, you are a much inferior robot, use the drone to your advantage.
Gameplay Video
Gameplay Goals:
In Low Battery, you have two main goals:
-
Stay alive.
-
Get through 10-time portals.
If the player dies the game resets, all progress is lost.
If the player makes it through 10-portals the player wins.
Fighting is not very common in this game although the action is still constant. The player will not be able to kill most enemies​.
The game focuses on running for your life rather than fighting.
Movement
You can:
-
Run.
-
Jump.
-
Punch.
-
Shoot (If you manage to find ammo.)
-
Burn/slow enemies with your drone laser.
The game has a significant focus on the enemy design and how they react with the drone.
Pillars:
Runner: There may be combat but everything should exist with the focus of helping the player run and keeping the gameplay fast. The focus should never be killing your opponent.
Decision Maker: A players success should mostly be dictated by their decision-making ability. How quickly and effectively they can adapt their strategy to the unknown. It should not just rely on their skill with a mouse and keyboard.
Panic Inducing: During core gameplay, the player should always be in a panic of looking left and right. The player should be alert and ready at any moment. Everything should give the player a reason to be looking at the screen.
Drone/Player
Drone/Player:
The player can do most basic fps actions.
​
They also have access to a drone that can help in many ways.
The player can:
-
Aim the drone.
-
Activate/deactivate the drone.
When deactivated the drone will:
-
Shrink its camera feed to a smaller out of the way size.
-
Show vision cones of enemies.
-
Print out stats like the enemy type or health of what you are pointing it at.
-
Does not use energy.
When activated it will:
-
Grow to a larger size and lighten so that even in the darkest of places it can see fine.
-
Shows vision cones of enemies and prints stats.
-
Will damage and push enemies it faces back.
How does it fit into the gameplay pillars?
Runner: Although the drone does do light damage, the player would have to run through 4 max energy bars worth of energy to kill a common enemy. The damage is only really good for killing small hunters.
The primary focus of the weapon is its push back. Allowing the player to push back enemies when cornered or trapped. Or allow players to plan ahead and push unsuspecting enemies away so that you don't cross into their vision.
Decision Maker: Visualization of the enemies vision gives the player lots of important info to help them with their decision. As well, giving a health value can inform the player of the best action for them to take at this time.
Panic Inducing: When the drone is off the player is at a disadvantage. The drone cannot be used if the player has no energy. This means players lose a large portion of their information when they run out of energy, and the information is ever so important in this game. Making the player feel lost and alone when they are already low on health raises the stakes and also the player panic level.
The drone laser also requires the player to look at their target. Making a trade-off, this one enemy chasing you has to stop for a bit but you sacrifice the vision of where you are going. Nothing scarier than walking back into the unknown.
Prowlers:
The main enemy you will encounter.
Prowlers are smart bug-like creatures and they will hunt you down until their last breath.
​
They are bigger than you and stronger than you, you do not want to pick a fight with them.
Prowlers have a few key behaviors that make them this way:
Prowlers
Smell: Prowlers have a sense of smell that will keep them moving in your general direction. Even if they can't see you. It's not super accurate, but enough to keep constant pressure on the player.
However, I had to be careful with smell, if every prowler could smell across the map, they would all soon group up near the player, allowing the player to easily run around every prowler in the level all at once. To prevent this I made it so prowlers can only smell X far. Meaning any prowler close to you will apply constant pressure on you but there is still always a large chance that some prowlers are in front of you, waiting to cut you off. Making sure the pressure on the player was from all angles, not just behind them.
Brute Force: Seems simple enough, give them lots of health, damage, and speed; make a strong enemy. But there are a few things I needed to do to make sure encounters with prowlers were fun and engaging instead of instant death/punishing.
Player Knockback: When a player is hit by a prowler I made the player get knocked back. This makes it very clear for the player which direction they got hit from. It also gives them a few seconds to react before they get hit again.
Drone Laser Pushback: Not all hope is lost if you are hit into a corner. It is still a good idea to avoid being cornered with a prowler on your tail, but it's not game over yet. The player may use their drone to push a prowler back, unveiling an exit. The only catch is the player has to look at the prowler to push him back, creating an incredibly tense stare down.
Bullets: If you are lucky enough to find one of these on the ground, congrats you discovered my recovery mechanic! When all hope is lost a bullet will instantly kill almost any prowler, just don't miss your shot.
Prowler Variations: There are three types of prowlers. The most common is the Stalker, then Wanderer, then Portal Guard.
Stalker: The Stalker uses smell to constantly apply pressure to the player.
Wanderer: His movement is always random until he sees the player.
Portal Guard: They stick near the portal exit, making sure that difficulty increases as players get closer to clearing the floor.
How prowlers work with the gameplay pillars:
​
Runner: Prowlers will hunt you down. They are the main thing you are running from and the backbone of this pillar.
Decision Maker: Whenever you are confronted by a prowler the decision making starts to get serious, do you look around and find the best path to escape? Slow it down with your laser, but use up some energy? Maybe you use one of your bullets? Or a mix of it all. Whatever you decided you better decide fast.
Panic Inducing: With permadeath in place and little at your hand for defense, prowlers can make for some frightening moments. Especially with them constantly swarming around you as you try and sneak by. Along with random level generation meaning, you never know what or how many will be around each corner.
Random Level Gen
Random Level Generation:
The game uses a random chunk based level generation that aims to still give lots of control over the level generation/level design.
A grid is laid out with a pre-made chunk in each section. The pre-made chunks give me control over the general design of every level.
Runner: The custom chunks allows for me to make pieces that support this pillar. For example, I can make a chunk that allows players to run through a small tunnel, but not prowlers. Also allowing me to make paths and open spaces for the player to run through.
Decision Maker: By being able to control these chunks and how often each one spawns, I am able to ensure that the player almost always has a choice of different paths to take. Allowing them to factor their environment into their decision making.
Panic Inducing: You don't know what's behind any corner and you don't know where any corners are. It keeps everything new and surprising for the player.
I also made sure to give lots of control over these aspects:
-
Each chunks spawn chance.
-
Enemy spawn positioning within chunks.
-
Fruit spawn locations within chunks.
Random level generation was chosen for this game for a few reasons:
-
Replayability - if there is going to be permadeath you need some change within each playthrough to keep things interesting.
-
Uncertainty - testing a players memory is not a pillar of the game. It's about fast decision making, not remembering where an enemy is placed from the previous playthrough.
For this project I:
Did almost everything.
- Created and designed the gameplay experience from start to finish.
- Created 3 unique enemy types with smart intelligent adaptive behaviour.
- Created a Drone that can help you by seeing in the dark and pushing enemies away.
- Made a full progression tree.
- Two game modes, Endless Survival, and Story.
- Created a random chunk level generation system.
As well as many not as common gameplay designer tasks:
- Programmed everything.
- Made most of the sounds.
- Made animations.
- Made cinematics.
- Made balance tables and spreadsheets.
The majority of art assets/3d models were purchased from the unreal store.