Rise
Action Game
Team (6 in total):
Taveesin Sae Xu, Xingjian Ye,
Yifeng Yu, Zichang Yu,
Xinyi Zhang, JiaCheng Qiu
Role:
Game designer, UI designer
Sound designer, Animator
Duration:
4 Weeks
Tool:
Unreal Engine 4
Platform:
PC
01
Background
Rise was a minigame project during my sophomore summer internship in the Tencent Games. Rise highlights on the freedom in casting up to 16 different spells through the permutation of 4 elementals.
02
Game design
Since all of us were beginners and had limited familiarity with each other, we started off with an ice breaking activity, in which we shared and demonstrated our favorite games and any other interests.
Soon, we found that many people were sharing the same interest, the Harry Potter. Though not surprise on second thought——who had not dreamt to become a powerful wizard/witch, especially for the generation who grew up with the company of the Harry Potter? Off to a good start, we then begun to note down any element that came to our mind when we were talking about a wizard/witch.
We also researched on games that obtain any of the characteristics above, and found “Noita”, “Magicka 2” and “Hades” to be very inspiring. Then, we reached a consensus to provide the player with a high degree of freedom in casting a variety of spells.
With that idea in mind, me and other two teammates designed a spellcasting system, as shown to the right.
03
Mood board
After we had figured out the core gameplay, I made a mood board and wrote a story based upon it.
Norse Mythology
Yggdrasil (The World Tree)
Ragnarökr
Muspelheim
Niflheim
Svartalfheim
04
UI/UX design and other contributions
By the time, I had not yet taken any design course, so most interfaces were designed simply based on intuition.
Menu
Menu - Options
Menu - Levels
Blood system
Failed screen
(it has a very short animation——the scree would flash in red for 0.5 second and faded into grey under 2 seconds)
Paused screen
Muspelheim (Fire) Level - Loading Animation
Niflheim (Ice) Level - Loading Animation
Svartalfheim (Mud) Level - Loading Animation
Storytelling
（only a selected part)
Connecting the flow of the game using blueprint
Adding sound effects for all places needed using blueprint
(16 different spells, animations, button hover, button click, background, etc.)
Creating animations
(Menu screen)
Creating animations
(the loading animation)
05
My reflections
After completing the project, a rising interest in the game industry prompted me to reflect on the drawbacks in Rise. Here I am going to share 3 of my critical reflections regarding the UI design in Rise.
-
Lack of UI for the spell casting system
As human has limited memory capacity, it is essential to incorporate some form of UI that could assist the player to visual the process of setting up a spell. However, this is not shown in Rise.
My new idea is indicated in the image below: there should be three place holders that could be awarded to the 4 elementals (fire, ice, lightning, mud), and the below should be a bar that indicates the time remained to set up the spell. For each element selected, its representative color should be filled in the place holder. For example, when the player has selected “fire”, the 1st place holder should be in red, and the time bar should begin to count down. If the player has continued to select “ice” within 5 seconds, then 2nd holder should be in blue. If the player has casted the spell within 5 seconds using mouse left-click, or has failed to make a correct permutation, or has failed to cast the spell within 5 seconds, then the three place holders should return to their normal states.
-
Absence of an in-game tutorial
As the game control and key-mapping is rather complicated, it is essential to teach the new player how things are going to work at the very beginning. A good in-game tutorial should guide the player step by step, until they are ready to explore further by themselves. This requires the UI designer to have a thorough communication with the level designer.
However, though we all were somewhat aware of the function of a tutorial, but we failed to attach sufficient importance to it. As an UI/UX design, this is especially ashamed.
-
Inconsistence in the language
In Rise, both Chinese and English have been used alternately——the storytelling is in Chinese, while other interfaces are in English. However, this is a terrible and silly mistake. Player who could understand only one language would get confused. Again, this results from a neglection of the player.
Contact: xujiaxi19@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn