Thomas Kobelsky's BlogFilled with reviews, rants/raves, and puns. |
Group:Mark N. Barker - Programmer, Artist Thomas Kobelsky - Technical Designer, 3D Artist Braden Bahen - Level Designer Kyle Jensen - Project Manager, Sound Designer | |
|
Starting in our 5th term and continuing into halfway through our 6th term at VFS, we went into production of Hench, a fast paced action-platformer developed in the Unreal 3 engine. Set in an abandoned trainyard with a cel-shaded art style, the main objective in Hench is to gather Ghosts and feed them to your Master in the center of the stage to increase his energy and essentially bring him back to life. However, the Master is constantly expending energy to stay alive, and attacking Ghosts will decrease his energy level faster. We used our Flash game "Gizmosis" as a sort of prototype to see how the risk/reward system would play out, and doing this solved a lot of our initial worries in terms of if it would be fun to play. It also helped us envision how pathing works and what kind of environment would be "too open" for this style of gameplay. Another advantage the prototyping gave us was the hindsight to improve upon what we already had. More mechanics were introduced, mulitple height levels were created, and less time was spent clarifying pre-determined things between team members. We set up a Dev Blog detailing the processes we through. | |
The Servant and the Master
| The player controls a goblin-like creature called Hench. His devotion to the Master transcends the grave and leads him to an abandoned trainyard struck by destruction where the souls of the victims wander. Equipped with a demonic soul-devouring potato sack, Hench must find only the ghosts of the innocent victims to appease his Master's blackened heart and satiate his evil hunger. Being the only character able to jump, Hench is able to navigate the ruined train yard with the slightest of ease. Taking advantage of multiple levels of heights to both avoid and prey upon ghosts, he is able to save his Master's soul and embody him inside pieces of the train yard. |
 |
 |
Being the Master of all things evil, there is always a point where you must make a return to plague the world with unspeakable horrors. Being unable to perform any kind of physical interaction with metaphysical brings, the Master orders his most loyal underling to step up and gather as many innocent souls as possible to feed upon. |
The Enemies
| Tank is the Attacking Ghost who is constantly drawn towards the center where the Master is. When he collides with the Master, he takes off a large chunk of energy from the Masters reserve. Tank is also the slowest advancing enemy in the game, but the only one who can actually do any damage to the Master. |  |
 |
Mercedes is the Food Ghost. Capture and feed her to the Master to replenish and fill his energy reserves. After capturing a set amount of these Ghosts, a cut-scene will play where the Master grows larger, gathering parts of the environment to build his body. After several of these cut-scenes, the player wins the game. Through our prototype "Gizmosis" we felt that two of the enemy types could be merged into one (the Red Widget and the Green Widget) to form the Food Ghost Mercedes. This let us introduce a new enemy, Jet. She is also the fastest ghost in the game, and the only one who runs away from Hench. |
| Jet is the Special Ghost; the only ghost who will have a negative effect on the player when they collide. If Hench has any Ghosts captured when Jet touches him, all the ghosts will be released from the sack while a stun effect for a few seconds is induced on Hench. He is also the only enemy that will chase after Hench anywhere on the map. However, since he cannot jump, the player is able to "trap" Jet behind obstacles to make a clean getaway. |  |
v13.26.34