REWORK KIT
Rework Kit is an action-adventure game made with unreal engine which I worked on as a narrative and level designer.
Please note that all of the documentation will be in french as not all team members were confortable with english.
Notion : https://www.notion.so/Vision-f31899a318fb4835803014f3d5e8dd9e
TRAILER REWORK KIT
The genesis of Rework Kit
You know how this goes. At first everything is just a bunch of blocs without textures.
How do we turn this into a compelling universe ? Well basically you try on differents outfit and see which one looks best ! And make the most sense, too...
For Rework Kit, they were several things to consider. It's a fast moving game, we need space. There is also a bunch of mooves we need to be able to perform, like double jump, climbing, using a grapple hook, we need verticality.
So open spaces with verticality. What could do the trick ? You're a superhero in a city ? A mutant animal in a big forest ? We liked the Idea of buildings a lot but the superhero theme did not convince everyone. So as we discussed who could be jumping and climbing around in a big city full of buildings (yes, a freerunner, obviously !), we were kind of, if not completely, inspired by the upcoming release of Cyberpunk 2077 at the time. That's why we decided to go for a cyberpunk post-apocalyptic world.
This might seem like an odd choice. Usually you want a cyberpunk city to be full of criminals and other dangerous people. Well here, characters interactions weren't in the core of the concept. We just wished to allow the player to jump and climb to their heart's content. That's why the post-apoclyptic scenery made sense, no one to bother you !
But as a story writer, I still had the ambition to convey a story, but with a rather smaller cast. The few peoples still in this city after everything has shut down.
Why post-apocalyptic ?
The world of Rework Kit
A little writing technique. Ask yourself four questions to define your world :
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Universe : What kind of world is it ?
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Characters : Who lives there ?
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Idea : What do you want to talk about through this project ?
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Events : What major events did occur ?
Now the answers to those questions, in the context of rework kit :
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Universe : A highly technological but devasted world
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Characters : Two factions, the Imps and the Plants.
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Idea : Dependance to technology
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Events : The Shutting
So normally if you are a curious type of player, you'll ask yourself "who are these people ? What is The Shutting ? What happened ?!" and you'll be hooked.
Or, you are that kind of player that don't care about a game's story and passes every cutscenes... and I don't blame you !
To improve on the basis
So we have the big picture. Now we keep iterating on the details !
Down below you can see all the final versions of the documentation I used to communicate with the team and decide what would be in the game.
The Characters
They define the world they live in just as much as it defines them. A hollow character will stand out like a sore thumb in any project, that's why I give them extra special care.
I am a practicionner of emotionnal intelligence and psychology, and I like to use it when writing characters. To better understand who they are, how they might react in a given situation.
So as you can see, it's a lot of writing, and as much as I like to keep my team updated of the game's story and universe, not everyone has the time to read the equivalent of a novel everytime.
That's why I did my best to create intelligible schematics to communicate with the team so that everyone could better understand what's going on and bring it to life.
Locations
So, as you might be aware of, a story is composed of two units : the unit of time, and the unit of space. Where we go, and when we go.
Even though the unit of time isn't necessarily very present for the player, as we usually want them to be free of any time constraint, both units are very important to keep track of how everyone moves and acts within the game's world.
And more simply, it's important to know how the world looks and what actions are possible in what context !
For instance, this climbing ability I keep talking about actually works with magnets.
In the game lore, we established that cars could ride the walls thanks to magnetics roads.
So in locations where they would be buildings and roads, you would be able to climb !
But in places a little further away from the city, this would'nt be your main method of transportation
This an elegant way to use the context to make the player understand what he can and can't do at any given moment.
Some panels describing each zone, with visual references for artists.
So this I really loved working on, it's a bestiary ! I said characters define the world they live in, but so does each and every creature that roams it (or in this case, machines).
Though we ended up not having a combat system that would exploit them, it's still interesting to see what area would have been populated with.
The Events
So now we know who lives in this world and what it looks like. All we need to know is what's going on !
What's fun with a post-apocalyptic world is that a lot has already happened. We're not here to write the story of that world, only to finish it. Usually it will already have a massive backstory to explain why it's in that state, and you can choose to provide informations on that to the player, or keep it a mystery.
In this case, the post-apocalyptic scenario and the stillness the world is trapped in is an echo to the relationship of the characters involved.
So, the atrocity of an eyesore down below is actually the sequencing of the game ! With a list of every cutscenes and gameplay section, where they take place and when.
And there is a much more eye friendly version where you can see the estimated length of each sections. As you can see the gameplay section are proeminent, which they didn't seem like with the other version of the document !
My work on the Level Design
Parralel to my work as the Narrative Designer, I also tackled the task of designing the challenges and set the rythm for the player, in tandem with another Level Designer.
Once the Game Designers had settled what would be the abilities of our protagonist, our work was to imagine different situations where those abilities would be put to the test. Each challenge has a label indicating what power is needed to overcome it. Can you see which is which while playing the demo ?
When we estimated we had enough situations, we then proceeded to assemble them in a full blown level.
The issue here was mostly about rythm and what combos would be more intuitive to put together once in gameplay.
THE END
So this is the end of my feedback on Rework Kit. They would be a lot more to say on what happened on this project, but I think I got the gist of it !
If you have anymore questions, don't hesitate to contact me !
Mail : dupontaxel4@gmail.com
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/dupont-axel/
Link to the demo :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1otqTl5rWjpsZh1eTdfGA3uxtHzl3HzS1/view?usp=sharing