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Samsara
Find Samsara
on steam!
Tools I used during the 2 weeks
Samsara is a game currently in development by a studio called Infinity27. I worked alongside them as a junior game designer & level designer. Samsara is a souls-like game which has a unique respawn system of each time you die, you respawn as a different playable character related to the choices you made throughout your gameplay and decisions along with themes of Buddhism.
Pitch:
Responsibilities:
I had an extremely short amount of time to prepare a pitch, so I did a walk through in time of my level as well as displaying my design documentation. The set up is not my camera nor setup, due to internet issues at the time, so my presentation does not display my best eye to eye contact while presenting virtually either. However, this is my pitch to the other designers, artists and developers as well as leads in the company.
I worked with Infinity27 as a fulltime 2 week intern designer. In that 2 weeks, I was tasked with designing and implementing a quest within a level of my own design. This quest had to be within the guidelines of 3 objectives.
- Interactable NPC with branching dialogue.
- Collectable / Main quest item.
- Enemy encounters.
As this was a short time frame of 10 days, after learning theory and giving a spare day to prepare pitches, I made a "starter dungeon" type level.
For my responsibilities, I was required to:
- Produce and Make and complete digital theory and research work, which is documented clearly and well.
- Design a quest that meets all 3 objectives.
- Design a level which works well and gives good pacing to the accompanying quest.
- Complete a blocked out grey box level in Unreal Engine 5.
- Write and Design accompanying dialogue with branching options.
- At the end of the 2 weeks, prepare and present a pitch.
Design Documentation:
My documentation began with my own idea to create a short and to the point survey for gamers who were not within Infinity27, so I could decipher what quests people enjoyed the most and found the most fun, compared to the ones they disliked the most. From there, I began my documentation on Miro where I timed myself for 8 minutes to come up with 10 different quest ideas, from there, I picked three I liked the most and narrowed it down to one which I thought would be the most fun to explore.
I also did:
- Quest Designs
- Level Designs / Concepts
- Dialogue Trees and Detailed Dialogue
- Environment Designs
- Pacing
- Bubble maps & Level layout
- Critical Path
- Composition
- Shape & Colour theory
- Flowchart
- Start, Middle & End of quest points
- Key Branching Points
- Key NPC fleshed out
Quest Design
Level Layout
Dialogue Trees
Quest Design
1/7
My level & Quest:
Samsara Preta
Samsara Hallway
Samsara Hallway
Samsara Preta
1/6
My quest was playing into Samsara's choice based "Karma" system. This gives good & bad karma depending on choices and combat choices made in game. I used my NPC as Samsara's most common enemy who had been betrayed by his clan and left to die after being stolen from. The player is tasked with avenging and retrieving the weapon that was stolen from him. After returning with the weapon, the NPC will ask to be mercy killed with their weapon, and lay to rest. The player can decide through 3 options. I would have been able to include all the scripting and branching dialogue options as well, however, at the time of this internship, I was not able to as we were not this far into the development stage of adding in dialogue.
- Mercy kill and return weapon (Best Karma)
- Mercy kill and steal weapon (Negative Karma)
- Leave to die and steal weapon (Worst Karma)
I made my quest like this for a moral dilemma and a introduction to the karma choice system in the game and how actions matter. My level works alongside this as the level is based in their starter area / world and is an area which has been abandoned by once royal people and overrun with the most common enemies, of which the NPC has been betrayed by. This was made in grey-box, as I was not tasked with decorating with assets, as the game is still in production, so I did my best to make a detailed grey-box level.
Samsara Teaser Trailer
Samsara Environment Showcase
(Client Work Next Page)
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