Ninja Escape

2024

This was a mobile game which was based of Katana Zero and Metal Gear Solid Snake two fused together to make a stealth based top down action puzzle game, the whole point of the game is to kill a specific guard who will drop a key card, then you can escape however you have to use your special abilities to do this, such as slowing down time so that the player can escape from an enemies field of view. 

Game Play Mechanics

While starting this project I had to learn how to use a button hold for the D pad, this allowed the player to move through the world by holding the button in the direction they want to walk. I then developed some of the sprites for the game like the D pad and the other UI buttons. The 4 main buttons the player has are the D pad to move around the map, then three different abilities which is, "Smoke Bomb, Star, Time Slow" so I first created each UI button on the website "Pixilart" and using personal knowledge I used inspirations of ninja gear to make the sprites like a ninja star or a small smoke bomb, I then created a smoke effect for the game by creating multiple different sprites of grey clouds with a darker grey outline, then within unity they will over lap each other and are slightly transparent as this will both effect the players sight without completely removing there sight, this however hides the player from the enemies allowing for a very quick get away.

The ninja star was designed multiple times as it was hard to make it look thick enough and so I created a inner lining and then around the center created a dark grey square then developing around the points of the lining a lighter grey to create a metallic sharp look by having a cohesive look and make it look as best as possible. The ninja star is a simple game object which reads which direction the player last walked, when they press the star button it will go the direction of the last direction the player walked and then shoots forward, then when the ninja star hits a wall the player will immediately be teleported to that point which creates two ways to play my game which is either of being able to escape and sneak away from the enemy or be super aggressive and teleport behind enemies or even be able to teleport to the front of enemy then use the star again to be behind the enemy and kill them like that .

The final ability is that the time slow down, as stated before this is really driving a fair bit of inspiration from Katana Zero where within that game you have the ability to slow down time to do precise movements and allow yourself to do more complex things and have more time to think and so I added this to my game where you could slow down time down to a tenth of a second for a few seconds, this allows the player to kill multiple guards as quickly and escape quickly. 

Character Designs 

I had a few mock ideas about how to develop the main character as a ninja however while trying to develop this character even further this didn't work for while researching different ninja headgear which I discovered that most ninjas have a single peace of fabric which is folded over there head which when drawing it this only made the main character seem like a black blob with a semi circle with a square end which I didn't think it fit the imagination I had and also what I believe a player would want to play as, and so I change this to a samurai as this allowed me to have less limits to work with and also allow me to create a better character design. 

I created a design with a dark green puffer samurai suit which allowed him to really convey the message about how this ninja is really a novice as he is in the complete wrong attire and that he doesn't deserve a ninja outfit, and so I then added a manbun and just a simple sword and luckily as it was all a top down point of view which means I never needed to design a face.

Animations

I had to develop all of the animations for the enemies and the player and so I started with the player and so I started with a simple walk cycle, this is where the player slightly moves only their right shoulder and their legs move in an alternating pattern and this is because I wanted to simulate the player moving very fast and allowing the player too seem like they are very much trying to hide from the enemy, they constantly have there hand on the hilt of the sword and there non-dominant hand holding  the sheath of the sword so that the player can slash when ever they approach an enemy, for me to do this correctly I had to use myself as inspiration and so I took photos of myself running and how the character would walk. 

I then worked on the slashing animation where the player will use to attack the guards, and so I thought of the player using a quick slash movement where the player will quickly pull out the sword and slash then pull the sword back into the sheath to be able to run again, this was very fun to  do as I was able to use effects and make it feel like the player is super quickly attacking the enemies like his life depended on it because it does. 

I then worked on the enemy animations, this was a simple walk animation as I want the player to seem so much more complex and seem so much faster then the guards and so they have a slower movement speed with a slower animation, so they have slightly moving shoulders and a simple leg alternating pattern so that it is very obvious that the enemy is walking.

This was made within Unity