Ragnarök is a mash-up of a traditional 'Shmup' and a 2D adventure game.  In Ragnarök, the player controls a small rebel ship taking on foes much greater than themselves in an attempt to save the galaxy.

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Ragnarök was created over a single semester with a team of 3 in DigiPen's Zero Engine.  It features 4 unique bosses, 3 adventure style levels, and 3 ship upgrades that change the way players approach levels and fights.

Level & Content Design

3

DigiPen's Zero Engine (Python)

3 Months

Sh'mup

1

Keyboard

Personal Contributions:

• Designed and implemented AI for the first phase of the final boss and the smaller enemies

• Conceived the AI for the themed bosses, which was then implemented by the tech lead

• Built and tested the game's adventure style levels

Post Mortem

Ragnarök was an attempt to combine the boss rush elements of games like Shadow of the Colossus with the thematic upgrades and levels of games like Mega Man in a Sh'mup package.  In many ways, I feel we succeeded with our initial design intent.  The bosses we created were thematically distinct, had mechanics that made sense for their visuals and level, and had upgrades that were reminiscent of the powers shown by the boss, themselves.  The boss fights also proved to be really engaging via testing, in spite of some questionable difficulty spikes and poorly taught mechanics.

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Although the mash up worked well for the bosses and upgrades, the levels proved to be the low point of the game.  Each of the upgrades only had one mechanical use in the adventure segments and neither drastically improved the player's ability to clear the area.  The decision to use both horizontal and vertical segments for the levels also felt awkward due to the ship's constant upward facing.  If we had cut the adventure segments completely in lieu of improving the boss fights, I think the game would have been substantially better as a result.

The Good

The Bad

• The Bosses were all interesting and fun to play against in spite of any issues they may have had

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• The art and music were really well done for a freshman game and were all custom made that semester

• The adventure style levels killed the game's pacing and were generally less fun to play

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• My lack of coding experience put a large burden on our tech director until later in the semester where I was able to carry my weight more

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• The final boss' second phase was far too difficult.  Even the devs struggle to defeat it consistently

Game Credits

• Ryan Baker - Level & Content Design, Composer

• Eric Gleiser - Gameplay Programmer, UI/UX & Content Design, Composer

• Richard Grover - Artist