Zenko: A Fox's Tale

Lead Designer

Available On Steam

Introduction

Studio: Team Wolf Packtics

Personal Role: Lead Designer, Technical Designer

Team Size: 17 members, 1 advisor

Development Time: November 2020 - Present

Description: Join the young fox Zenko in a journey across an abandoned mountain settlement above the clouds. Use a mystical ability to swap between the realms of spirits and reality, and gather the wayward spirits of the mountain to restore an ancient shrine.

Overview and Media

Zenko: A Fox's Tale is a capstone game produced by a team of 17 students at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy. I was the Lead Designer on the project, working alongside a Project Leader, Programming Lead, Art Lead, and Development Director. My design team was made up of 6 members: 3 level designers and 3 technical designers.

All videos on this page were produced and edited by me, with some footage provided by team members.

Pre-production: Brainstorming

Before Wolf Packtics could begin work, the team needed a concept to work towards. I ran the team's brainstorming over a series of several hour-long sessions, in which we discussed characters, tone and themes, settings, narrative goals, and mechanics.

By the end we decided on several key points.

Our setting would be an abandoned settlement on a mountain, described as "amidst a sea of clouds".
We would aim for a light-hearted, whimsical tone, but with a hint of melancholy behind it all.
We wanted to create a fast-paced platformer that encouraged exploration.
Our main character would be a young fox, who soon came to be known as Zenko.

Once initial brainstorming was concluded, I quickly designed a Game Design Document to communicate Zenko's thematic and mechanical goals to the entire team.

Production Begins: Vertical Slice

Our first milestone on the path of development was vertical slice. We began developing our core mechanics and working towards our first major goal: a striking visual target for our art and environment design.

Vertical Slice Demo

I worked closely with the level designer in charge of the Village for the first part of the demo. Together we developed the path that Zenko would travel down, the lighting in both the physical and spirit realms, and the post processing effects. We also reached out to industry professionals at Iron Galaxy Studios for critique on our lighting and effects.

My contributions on the second part are as follows:

Collaborated with the programming team to create Zenko's movement abilities, fine-tune his movement values, and squash bugs.
Created the 'Foxfire Signs' that reset Zenko's dash and jump through a blueprint that connected to C++ source code.
Made a simple interaction where the spirit destroyed a gate as it flew through it.

Production Continues

Our vertical slice presentation impressed the audience with its high visual quality, but we received criticism on the lack of polished gameplay to accompany it. As lead designer, I made it our goal to eliminate those concerns as work proceeded into march.

I personally worked on three major gameplay elements:

The moving platforms, which utilized splines to easily create paths and timelines to easily start and reverse their movement.
The 'spirit bells', where I implemented blueprint functionality alongside programmer-written C++ to make an object that gave feedback and modified the environment when Zenko dashed into it.
The interaction system, which allowed the technical members of the team to easily create a wide range of triggers and effects.

Blueprints

Left: Platforms | Middle: Bells | Right: Interaction

Click image to view an interactive display.

The team worked very hard to meet the goal. I once again collaborated closely with the level designer of the Village to transform it from a small demonstration section into a full fledged game map. I also coordinated the effort to implement all available game mechanics into the level. The result was an even stronger demonstration than our first.

March Status Update

Playtesting and Feedback

In addition to the previously showcased Village, two other levels were in the works: the Shrine and the Estate. The design team worked tirelessly to complete them, and we decided to run our very first playtest of Zenko once the Shrine was in a functional state.

Early Look at the Shrine

Our first playtest had over 30 participants. The lead team alternated between sessions where we recorded our playtesters and occasionally provided assistance. The recordings were shared with the team and proved pivotal in refining Zenko into an even better game.

Several iterations to the levels were made in response to the feedback, as well as improvements on the mechanics.

June Status Update

Response to feedback: 3:08 - 4:48

I added a new particle effect to the bells as an indicator that they were usable. This particle effect fades once the bell is rung, to signal that it is now inert.

I also added a function to move the camera over to the object the bell affected. This addressed a frequent complaint- the playtesters didn't know what the bells were doing in many places.

The moving platforms received a similar particle effect both on top of the platform and along its path. Specifically these platforms move whenever Zenko swaps between the physical and spirit realms. Previously playtesters could not differentiate between these types and types that moved automatically. The new effect solved that issue and made anticipating the movement path easier.

Additional monitored playtesting sessions occurred monthly as the team prepared additional content for players to give feedback on. These sessions were enabled with the help of Steam features. I was responsible for packaging the game, uploading to Steam, and adjusting Steam settings to ensure that playtesters had the latest version of Zenko.

Lessons Learned

Zenko: A Fox's Tale was my first experience with designing a commercial-quality game, my first time shipping a project to Steam, and my first opportunity to work on a full team of artists, programmers, designers, and producers both in general and as a leader.

I learned many technical skills to develop Zenko, and a lot of interpersonal skills to effectively lead my design team and communicate with the team as a whole.

Zenko was my first major project made in Unreal Engine 4. I primarily worked with (and learned) Unreal blueprints. I also regularly reviewed the C++ source code written by the programming team, debugged it, and made edits to assist in my own work and to solve bugs ahead of important milestones.
I used Jira to manage the design team's tasklist. Every week I assigned new Jira cards and reviewed each teammate's progress to identify, and eliminate in advance, potential roadblocks.
I grew skilled in Perforce source control to effectively solve technical issues as they arose. I coordinated with the programming lead to setup branches for prototyping, development, and release configurations.
I mediated between the art, design, and programming teams to ensure that all asset pipelines were running smoothly, and that completed assets were integrated into the game.
In my design team, I learned how to better communicate design plans to both technical designers and level designers.

The reception to Zenko so far has been stellar, and the team is expecting a great success when the game releases early this August. I'm very proud of how far Wolf Packtics has come, and can't wait to see its members' futures.