Anomaly started as a passion project between myself and two colleagues at Rocksteady, one fellow QA Tester and an IT Technician. We wanted to see what we could make to a high quality knowing that we were limited in terms of man-power and disciplines.

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Our core pillars for the game were that it must be "Skill Based", give a feeling of "Fast and Fluid Movement" and be "Competitive but Varied".

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A lot of our mechanics involved using the environmental blocks in different ways. We injected trials and shortcuts that could help a skilled player traverse the environment quicker. For example some of our blocks would move when shot, so a good player may be able to track and shoot these while he is still moving towards it, while a less skilled player may need to stop to take aim.

 

We used movement such as wall running, wall dodging, jumping and double jumping and an "Impulse" gun that could be shot against a surface to propel the character to create the fast and fluid movement.

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Each level is timed and new ways to complete the level using combinations of our existing momentum-based movement were constantly being found during playtests. To add to that each level was extremely quick to make due to how simple the environment was, a new level could take anywhere between a day to only a few hours to complete. As such we ended up with a wide roster of levels that players could compete to gain high scores on.

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Using Unreal Engine 4, we quickly prototyped our idea using C++ and Blueprints before seeking early feedback from colleagues at work. Taking this feedback onboard, we began to focus on ways to expand the game into a full product.

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Overall this project taught me a lot about how blueprints and visual scripting in general is a great tool for prototyping out new mechanics and ensuring that something is fun before committing to creating the VFX, Models and other assets for it.

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Key Responsibilities:

• Overall Design Direction

• Blueprints Prototyping

• Level Planning and Implementation

• UI HUD and Main Menu

• VFX creation and Implementation

• Asset Modelling, Texturing and Implementation

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Key Achievements:

• The demo was recieved well with good feedback from work colleagues including Design Directors at Rocksteady.

• Learnt a wide range of skills that help when dealing with cross-discipline teams.

• Used blueprints to prototype all mechanics in the game, including shooting and the air blast jump.

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For this project, as we were light on people, I had to learn a large number of things outside of the design discipline including:

• Creation and Implementation of UI assets including HUD and Main Menu.

• Asset modelling, Unwrapping and Texturing.

• Shader creation using UE4 material editor.

• VFX creation using Cascade.

• Audio implementation.

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Some of my work that can be seen in the teaser video here includes the cubes in their entirety, which use material parameters to change dynamically depending on what mechanics we want the player to experience, floating "mine" orbs that the player can shoot for points and a number of the levels shown.

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