Exodus
Intro
EXODUS is a resource-gathering survival game, where players control a fortress (‘Exodus’), chart a hostile alien planet, gather and refine resources, and recolonize a clan of survivors. The game was published on itch.io in December 2019. Download Link: https://teamexodus.itch.io/exodus The project is a continuation of the Entertainment Technology Center’s Yearlong Game Studio. We received design drafts, concept art, as well as a prototype from the planning team. Based on the given framework, we finalized the game play mechanics, created high quality art assets, and eventually released the completed game on itch.io. |
TrailerOur game is a single player PC survival game, which the guest plays as a fortress, carrying survivors through a harsh landscape. He or she needs to send survivors to gather resources and manage the colony’s resources on this cosmic planet. |
We decied to simplify the original mixing mechanism inside fortress(picture above), and working more towards the inner fortress modeling and lighting.
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Design Iteration
After carefully read through the design documentation, we found that we still need to keep iterate on the design because some of the original design is out of scope, and also does not match with our team member's skill sets. The original documentation is more towards game play mechanism, but we have four artist in the team thus it will works better if we iterate the design more towards artistic. We talked with faculty and they all agreed that we should keep the game play design within scope and make effort on art part. |
Art Iteration
The concept art provided by the planning team portrayed a somber, yet tense cosmic planet with bright foliage and limited consumable resources. We aimed to further carry on this unique artistic vision. However, the given art assets were mainly for establishing the concept art, therefore were not optimized to be directly used in the game. We cleaned up and refined the models to a professional quality, making sure the poly counts are within the reasonable range, and can be properly rendered in the Unity 3D engine with high efficiency. We also created new art assets for characters and environments to accomplish with the unique artistic vision which goes with the story background. |
As for the animation, the biggest challenge was that we had 6 characters (survivors) with various appearances, statuses and movements. To make sure everything can be finished within our 14 week timeframe, we used Mixamo for simple movements (walking and idling), and created simple rig and traditional key frame animation for complicated ones (interacting with dashboard, environment objects animation, etc .) |
Playtest and Iteration
Based on a “follow the fun” mentality, our team decided to let playtests drive the game’s weekly iteration cycle. As the producer, I was in charge of organizing weekly playtest events and gathering feedback. We conducted about 20 playtests throughout the semester, with players aged 15-60. The feedback received from each playtests was carefully documented, evaluated and addressed in the next development sprint. Changes based on the playtest results including 1) highlight the resources (add glowing effect) , and moving characters (add a headlamp) 2) further distinguish the food (green plants with fruits) and fuel (yellow plants with a greasy texture) 3) Improve tutorial part in the beginning 3) Add more intuitive and explicit UI Distinguishable food and fuel
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Our new UI elements
Headlamp on characters
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As the producer in this team, I was also in charge of keep tracking our tasks and keep communicating with faculty to make sure we could finish all of our features and publish it before deadline.
We had scrum meeting every day to keep everyone on track, and we hold weekly meeting with faculty to obtain feedback from those who have industry experience. I was using burndown chat to track each teammate's tasks and determine each mile stones for our project. |
For more details, please check our development blog:
https://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/exodus/
https://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/exodus/