Prism’s Core Mechanic Design

Developing Prism’s core mechanic to serve as the foundation for Prism’s gameplay and level design.

Role: Game Designer

Timeline: 8 weeks

Tools: UE5

  • Prism had been in the planning phase of development focusing on ideating the game’s design pillars and narrative. Though aspects of the plot have been established, Prism’s core mechanic and gameplay loop had yet to be defined. This prototype developed over 3 sprints aimed to develop a solid core gameplay loop, the crucial foundation for shaping Prism’s plot and level design ahead of pre-production.

    • Identify and iterate potential gameplay features

    • Validate mechanics through play test feedback

    • Design a core mechanic and game loop

  • A ‘Magnetic Throw’ mechanic with similarities to other popular mechanics such as Krato’s Axe and Captain America’s shield but with its own unique identity inspired by magnetism.

Game Development Process

My process for designing and iterating over Prism’s core mechanic.

Page section links:

Prototyping

Prototyping

Sprint 1: Experimenting
with movement

In addition to project planning, in sprint 1 I was inspired by force athleticism from Star Wars and worked on systems that used magnetic abilities to platform. However, these systems felt lacking as I wasn’t providing players ways to directly interact with the AI enemies. I began to experiment with ways to throw objects instead but using UE5’s physics engine to do so didn’t provide much control over the objects.

My development process over the course of three 2 week long sprints

Movement systems explored:

  • Wall jump

  • Pulsing off of metal surfaces

  • A flight system to simulate Prism flying through areas surrounded with metal surfaces

🎥 Visit my TikTok and YouTube channel for the extended version of these videos.

Sprint 2: Designing Prism’s magnetic throw mechanic

One of the PhD students suggested creating static objects when the player is holding objects instead of only using physics to move objects. Giving the appearence of physics behaving like magnetic powers worked much better as grabbing and throwing objects felt more precise and predictable.

Programatic break down

  • Line tracing to highlight grabbable objets

  • Moving selected physics object towards player

  • Destroying physics object and creating static object

  • Static object is attached to player’s hand socket

  • On throwing or dropping an object, the static mesh is unassigned and a new physics object instance is created

Sprint 2: Play Testing

Overall everyone thought throwing the magnetic ball was fun and satisfying. One play tester said it felt like throwing Captain America’s shield. Another said they liked that since the object returned back to them as long as they had good aim, they didn’t have to find more amo which felt like a reward system in itself. Everyone also had great constructive feedback which inspired helpful updates like a more user friendly control scheme, spatial UI feedback when holding objects and varying enemy responses per type of object thrown.

Players enjoyed:

  • Objects return to you without needing to find another

  • The enemies’ back flip animation when being hit

Players wanted:

  • A different control scheme

  • Variation in enemies responses from different objects

  • To see some parkour and platforming

  • Thrown objects to ricochet off of other objects

  • A radial magnetic attack

Sprint 3: Attacking multiple enemies with 1 throw

I added depth to the magnetic throw mechanic this round by chaining enemy hits together so that players can throw an object once to hit every enemy in range before the object returns to them. This was done by looping through an array of enemies within a sphere collision to update the thrown objects next target location with the next enemy location.

Programatic break down

  • Detecting NPCs overlapping the magnetic field

  • On throw, looping through enemies updating the next thrown object’s next target location with the next enemy

  • Triggering enemy reactions on being hit

  • If all enemies have been hit, the object returns to the player

Sprint 3: Play Testing

Players enjoyed the new chained attack feature and an unintended glitch allowing them to spam attacks. This round of testing shed light on how I can improve the game’s usability and expand on what the player found fun. This play test highlights video shows clips from each session organized by the following key takeaways.

Key takeaways

  • Attacking multiple enemies feels good

  • Need to fine tune aiming

  • Add variation to enemy hits

  • Refine how to pick up objects

  • Spamming attacks would be fun

  • Update & provide more UI information

Next Steps in Process

Extend mechanic into gameplay loops

Play with Prism’s magnetic abilities to discover what affordances they intuitively provide players to design meaningful systems.

Develop a combat gameplay demo

Demo Prism’s gameplay in a battle arena level to showcase her abilities and platforming.