Path of Sorrow is a local co-op beat'em up narrative game that I worked on as a game designer. It tells the story of a child who just lost his father in front of his eyes and is now going through the different stages of grief, represented by monsters and different environments. The ghost of the father accompanies the child, helping him to fight his demons, and is played by the second player.
Path of sorrow has been made by a team of 9 students in under 3 full months in Unity 3D.
The game is divided into three levels, representing different stages of mourning: a gloomy city represents Shock and Denial, a burning cave representing Anger, and an isolated tundra with a mountain representing Depression and finally Acceptance.
The gameplay, heavily focused on combat, is different for each character.
The child is a melee character, fighting with a knife, and the father is a ranged character fighting with a rifle.
Each character also has powerful unique abilities, also linked to the mourning process. As an example, Sadness is a special attack that makes blood tears fall of the sky, with an area of effect around the child.
To finish with, both players control a unique slider, which allows them to voluntarily give more power to the other player while losing some themselves, following the need of the situation.
When we decided that we wanted to make a beat’em all with a strong narrative identity, I initially proposed to work around the idea of grief feelings. I then made a lot of research and started heavily linking combat to the narration.
The idea of working on a combat design centered on the emotions felt during a mourning phase was very interesting to me. I entirely designed the combo system, the special abilities, and the power slider.
I worked along with the other designers to create the level design bricks. I entirely designed the third level, the tundra, including paper level design, creating the enemy waves, and tweaking in the game engine.
Second Year
Music & Sound Design