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Polyfall is a large, open-world game, in which the player must explore and collect the missing pieces to the giant megastructures. The player navigates the world with a grappling hook and a gliding suit, giving them a unique mode of transport and exploration.
Engine: Unity 3D
Team Size: 5 Members: 2 Designers, 2 Artists, 1 Programmer
Project Length: 4 Months
As a designer on the project, I was in charge of concepting both how the player would move around in the space, as well as what the environment would feel like to explore. The huge scale of the game's original vision meant that the player would need a way to move around the world quickly and efficiently. One of the most important things to me when designing Polyfall was that the player had a sense of enormity and scale. The focus of the game was on the huge megastructures; large ancient machines that the player must repair. One of the ways I achieved this was to break up the game world into an archipelago of tiny explorable islands.
Through testing and iteration, we quickly learned what worked and what didn't. The initial plans for Polyfall's environments called for linear and confined areas. After several iterations we decided that a linear environment wasn't conducive to the movement mechanics we were working with. We opted for a much larger space that allowed the player to freely explore. This not only made the world seem bigger, but by designing the map with the goal in the center, the player's objective was always at the forefront of gameplay.
In the end, Polyfall was a huge success. The game tested extremely well and is a visual standout. On top of that, I feel that mechanically, the game is very satisfying to play.
In this video, you can see the player striving to collect a pair of items in order to progress in the game. Along the way, we see the player make use of their grappling hook and ability to glide to clear vast distances and large cliffs. In the demo, the player explores the massive in game environment and collects several of the components needed ot repair the megastructure, seen on the horizon.
The first thing players see when they begin the game is this sweeping vista of the raw sandstone clifflines transplantes into the ocean. This both sets the tone and shows the sheer scale of the game.
The huge turbine-like structure looms overhead and is visible from almost every other part of the environment, keeping player's attention on the task at hand.
The simplicity of the visual style allowed us to rapidly prototype and create assets as well as take more fantastical liberties with the game; this beacon for example allows us to show the player where they should be headed next without getting bogged down wth why or how it might work.
