Game Description
Skull Jelly is a combat-platformer where you play as a jellyfish that magically fused with the horned skull of an aether-wielding owl. Unable to return to your watery home you must fight to survive on the strange surface by channeling your new powers to mold your squishy body.
This project serves as a Vertical Slice or Proof of Concept of a mechanic to make abilities more interactive.
Solo developed while leading a team of artists over the duration of 10 Months and has 15-20mins of gameplay.
Unreal Engine 5.3.2
My Role?
Game Designer
Working with Artists
While I am the sole developer of this game I did not do it alone, since I had no luck finding a model of a jellyfish merged with a horned skull online (Big surprise). I collaborated with numerous talented, artistic individuals to make the assets for this game to achieve my vision.
Meet the Team
Genevieve Peters
Environment Artist, 3D/Character Modeler, Character Rigger, Animator
Sammi Chan
Prototype Character Rigger
Kaisei Meighan
Music Composer
Special Thanks To…
Game Mechanics
Internal Channel
I was inspired to make this mechanic from reading high fantasy novels, a lot of the ones I liked had magic systems where the user could channel magic energy through their body to empower it, increasing speed, strength, and durability or even healing wounds. I wanted to create a mechanic that resembled the constant focus in the peripheral.
The mechanic has two functions:
The player can only interact with certain platforming puzzles while Channeling.
The player can only attack while in their Combat Form, which they enter by Channeling.
It works like this:
The player begins Channeling by toggling with "LT / Left Trigger”, when they start a bright purple Check will spawn randomly in the dark section around the player’s health bar. A white Cursor will also spawn and rotate around the player’s health bar.
To keep Channeling the player must press “RT / Right Trigger” when the Cursor is over the Check.
Wall Jump
The Wall Jump was inspired by the wall jump in Blasphemous where rather than being triggered by running into a wall, the player must jump then hold down an input to hang on the wall. Upon releasing the input the player will be launched in the opposite direction of the wall, pressing “Down” with the movement input cancels the wall hang. The only surface the player can Wall Jump on is the bright green Algae Walls, this is also used as a wayfinding technique.
Special Abilities
Special Abilities were added to give the player more options during combat. The player starts out with the Projectile ability while the Blast and Shield abilities are unlocked by finding the Ability Pickups in throughout the game. You can only use one ability at a time and can switch using “RB” and “LB”.
To use an ability the orange Ability Bar around must be full, ability energy can be gained by hitting Checks while Channeling and hitting enemies. Using an ability will completely deplete the Ability Bar.
Projectile
Fire a fast projectile in the direction the player is facing. Upon first contact the projectile will explode.
Blast
Release an explosive burst of energy in a large radius around you, dealing massive damage to anything enveloped in the attack.
Shield
Wrap yourself in energy for 3.5 Seconds, while the Shield is active it will completely nullify a single attack. After the timer ends or an attack is blocked the Shield will deactivate.
Warp
This ability serves as the player’s Dodge, when the “Left Face Button” is pressed time will slow to a crawl. The player will lose control of their normal form and take control of an aetherial version of themselves, they can move around in any direction on the 2D plane and after 3 Seconds they will teleport to the aetherial form’s location and time will return to its normal pace.
The player can Warp through enemies and Warpable Walls.
Systems
Channel Manager
The player will have to overcome two types of environmental puzzles that revolve around the Internal Channel mechanic. To create a modular system that would allow actors to be easily added and removed from the manager I used a Blueprint Interface. An Interface allows you to call a function from any actor that utilizes the interface using no hard references which are expensive.
Checkpoint System
Checkpoints are actors with a trigger box that call on the Game State when the player walks through it. There are two types of Checkpoints, Hard Checkpoints and Soft Checkpoints. Hard Checkpoints save the players current stats (Current Health, Abilities Unlocked, Doors Opened) and are used when the player dies, they will spawn back at the location with the stats they had at the time of triggering the Checkpoint.
Soft Checkpoints do not save any information from the player, they are used when the player is damaged by a platforming obstacle (Spike Traps, Swinging Hammer). Getting hit will damage the player teleport them back to the last Soft Checkpoint.
Level Design
I aimed for the game to be playable from start to finish within 10-15 minutes. Using playtesting feedback I went through many iterations to achieve a level that taught the player the all mechanics using the teach, test, twist method while not drowning them with information.
UI
Initially, playtesters did not like the Internal Channel mechanic, there was mutual agreement that it was too much to keep track of it while fighting. Many suggested that I change how the mechanic works, but I did not want to change it. I worked around the problem by enlarging the UI and changing the colours to make it “pop” more. Once these changes were made the feedback I received was in a much more positive light.
Ocean
Gerstner Waves
Originally I used Unreal Engine 5’s water plugin to create an infinite ocean. However when I started to add assets the game started dropping in frame rate and stuttering. After using the Lighting Complexity mode I found that the reflectiveness of the water was really expensive.
I did research into ways to replace the water and came across the Gerstner equation which is used to simulate realistic waves. I implemented the logic into a material and applied it to a subdivided plane, I struggled to tweaks the values of the equation to get the look I wanted so I decided to try a different method.
Blender Textures
I followed a guide to bake normal maps, height maps, and crest maps using Blender’s ocean modifier on a plane. I rendered a 64 frame animation and tiled each frame in a grid in Photoshop, then using an equation in a material on a subdivided plane I looped through the animation.
Conclusion
Both of these methods have the GPU displace the vertices of the plane while the CPU keeps their actual location. Making the plane appear to be moving but it is actually flat. But this method turned out to be more expensive that using Unreal’s water plugin, so I reverted back to using that. I do not regret exploring the creation of water as I learnt so much.
What I Learned
Don’t only listen to what players say at face value, figure out WHY they are saying it.
How to work with artists using moodboards.
Creating modular code to allow for easy iterating.
