Vartra Abyss is an action role playing game set in an underground cavern that has been corrupted by an otherworldly power. The player will play as a spelunker who has been captured by a faction of Vartra and recently turned. They must learn to master their new abilities to survive and navigate their dangerous new landscape.
​
Team
Darcy Morris - Project Manager, Level Designer, Narrative Design
Elie Begg - Vision Holder/Artist, Narrative Design
Monique Gonzales - Game Designer
Kaiden Day - Game Designer
Connor Galy - Game Designer
Chia-yu Chang - Artist
Timeframe: 12 Weeks Research, 12 Weeks Development
Software: Unity, Blender
Developed for: Windows
Play Vartra Abyss on Steam
This project was created as a cross-discipline final group project for my Bachelor's degree at SAE Creative Media Institute. We were tasked to create a game that tackled important socio-political or cultural issues. This game was inspired by our group's collective disenfranchisement with the social political climate of the time (The research and pre-production works are outlined in the Prospectus document below. We sought out to create a game in which the protagonist fought against a system that was unjust and allowed the wealthy elite to dictate the lives of the less fortunate. In Vartra Abyss The Abattoir represent the wealthy elite who wield their control over this worlds resource, blood, as a weapon. The player joins a rebel group know as The Mutated who have rallied together in an effort to end The Abattoir's abuse of power.
Development Process
In this project I was the Project Manager but also was the Level and Narrative Designer. When working collaboratively I like to ensure that we have a central, easy to access space that all members can use to design. In this project we used a Miro Board to map out visuals, narrative and level progression(which you can see below). From my years in theatre and script writing I find it useful to break things down into acts and story beats when coming up with an overall arc for a narrative.
Before designing the level I made sure myself and our Vision Holder, Elie, had plotted out all the key points for the plot so that I had a structure to work from for the level. After mapping out a quick level in Unity, I took a screenshot from above to bring back into Miro so that I could once again go over the plot with the level. Doing this step is extremely useful as it means that early on I can see if any of the structure for the level needs to change and it also means that I can ensure I'm not missing any detail in the level's functionality.
To be able to design and change the level rapidly I used a tilemap editor in Unity and asked the 3D assets creators to work to a system of 1x1m for 'ground' objects and 'corners'. This system worked extremely well as it allowed for quick changes to be made and made modelling much simpler.
Prospectus Document: Outlines the research and pre-production process of this project.