The Odd Gentlemen – 2015
I was the Lead Scripter on the episodic adventure game, King’s Quest. Throughout the five episodes and playable epilogue, I designed puzzles and encounters and managed three other designers to make sure their work matched the desired quality. While this is an adventure game and not a traditional level based game, I touched nearly all moments in the game.
Chapter 1: A Knight to Remember
I designed and implemented many of the puzzles and scripting in the game. Most notable was story ending with the player character, King Graham, facing off against the villain in a Duel of Wits, represented by a board game. I designed the board game on paper, played it with peers, revised it and implemented it in game, scripting player controls, rules, and board game AI, along with a tutorial built into a puzzle where the villain hypnotizes the player and causes him to lose.
Duel of Wits gameplay:
https://youtu.be/nDxLBPt5l1I?t=10341
Chapter 2: Rubble Without a Cause
The player is trapped in a prison with the people he met in the previous chapter. The player is given food each day that either the player can eat or give to NPC. These prisoners will slowly starve if they are not fed and the player must choose who gets fed each day weighing the consequences of the actions as a starved person is removed from the system and can no longer help the player escape. I was tasked to make sure that the system was balanced. With the limited food, the player can never starve all of the townspeople so there are no dead end conditions and perfect play would allow the player to keep them all fed. The balance was effective as players felt stressed about the decisions they had to make regarding the limited food as the consequences felt weighty.
Chapter 3: Once Upon A Climb
The player romances two princesses, one of whom becomes King’s Graham’s wife. We were intentional about making sure that the player never makes an explicit choice about which princess and instead let the relationship build organically through tracking the player’s actions and words throughout the chapter. We created a simple affinity system where players actions would add or subtract affinity based on how that princess would react. I worked to balance this system, determining what weight the various actions should have. We were successful as players felt like they connected to the princess they ended with.
Chapter 4: Snow Place Like Home
Chapter 5: The Good Knight
On chapters 4 and 5 I continued implementing puzzles and gameplay that moved the narrative forward, building on the tools we had built over the course of the project.
Ryan Pendant - Level / Game Designer 