Among Giants

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  The first Giant

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  Your trusty steed to help you navigate the large world

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  The world you can explore with no limits

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  The Snow Fox that guards the winter

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  Totems are used for upgrading your abilities

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  Smaller robots roam the world to protect its secrets

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  Giants react to aggression

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  Huge Whales swim the sky

Inspiration

Shadow of the Colossus was a huge inspiration, not only in gameplay terms but also from a technical standpoint. Narratively, it also tells a story without too many words and this was a challenge I accepted when creating Among Giants.

Zelda games have also left a mark on me in open world game design (Breath of the Wild) which fills the world with wonder and keeps the player motivated to keep going.

What it does

In the game, a sense of freedom was a must. From casual players to hardcore, it needed to grab the player from the start. The world is all open from the start and by using your feet, grappling hook, glide ability and even your horse, you can explore the huge landscape to find secrets and learn more about the world.

How I built it

It is all built in Unity and Blender for modelling. Pro-builder was also used extensively within Unity. Audacity for audio processing. Photopea for some quick editing... anything that is free :)

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge was the idea of using an alien language for the entire game. This slowly translates overtime when you hack more terminals but the onboarding at the start of the game was quite difficult to solve without breaking the universe I build e.g. without the usual pop-ups or tutorials in a readable language. After a few months of trying different ideas, I landed on the personal Droid that you come across at the start of the game that you befriend. The droid has now become a vital part of the game loop and experience/core narrative as being your helper, protector and friend.

One other challenge was how do I create that special bond between the Droid and player? this was vital to how I want the experience to end. During the course of this competition, the build went into Beta and through testing, it became clear that the droid needed something extra. Originally, I was fully against letting the droid speak english, as it would break the alien world I wanted to create. However, it occurred to me that since the player themselves is translating the world one character at a time through hacking terminals, it would make sense for the droid to also gain the ability to speak in a language the player understands. This felt like a perfect fit in the world I was trying to create.

In addition, working alone is never easy but with the scope of the game, it was hard to manage at times so smarter design and more trimming was needed. Focusing on "do at least one thing well" and build on top of that has always been my game design mantra.

Finally, the size of the world (25km squared) and giants that walk around was a performance challenge on Quest 3 but the stylised artwork and constant testing helped over come them. Filling out the world to make every corner interesting was also a challenge as this required careful level design to breadcrumb anything worthwhile.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Really proud of how R-011 (the Droid you find) has become a natural element in the overall game design and has ended up being the missing part holding it altogether.

The Droid will look at important objects and can project holograms/images e.g. icons, in the world without it feeling like UI as it is all dietetic and feels fitting in the universe.

The Droid has also gained the ability to protect the player from any hostility as well as start to talk in english as you gain more understanding through hacking and translating the alien language.

It was important that the player could complete the game without understanding the language but for those that spend time to do it, will be rewarded.

What I learned

Telling a story without text is a very hard concept, so thinking like a silent movie helped me develop the design.

I also learned that rewarding the player doesn't have to be physical game items/skills or abilities within the game only. Gaining knowledge for the player is also a satisfying for many.

What's next for Among Giants

Figuring out how the player makes their way to the final area needs careful attention. I need the experience to leave a lasting impression on the player that is thought provoking and needs to work if the world has not been fully translated or not.

Built With

• audacity
• blender
• ttsmaker
• unity