The game is a rogue-lite action game inspired by Hades, No Rest For The Wicked and FTL. You play the reanimated corpse of a forgotten hero; you must bring balance to a world torn in the fight between Life and Death, and relentlessly exploited by cursed automatons. To do so, the player will have to defeat the machines using various abilities obtainable throughout, which are all related to one of the four factions : Fire, Earth, Wind and Water. The gameplay relies on adaptative perk system, exploration-based levels full of small secrets to uncover and a mysterious lore hidden behind a cryptic alphabet.

The level design was meant to be a crucial part of the game; we wanted a focus on discovery and exploration, and for the player to have a real sense of curiosity for the world that was offered to them. In order to achieve this, we chose to go for an open world, that would feel less restraining than separate rooms with transitions in between. Of course, this posed several challenges, on a technical and an artistic level amongst others. 

The point was also to have a labyrinthine navigation through the zones ; we wanted the player to have several incentives to choose one zone or the other to continue their progression, as they will ultimately have to make choices in what zones they clear. That's why we created a corruption feature : once a zone is cleared, it becomes corrupted within 3 cycles (that is after 3 more zones are cleared). Once a biome is corrupted, the difficulty rises drastically, enemies respawn and give no reward if killed. This aimed to discourage backtracking and force players to choose wisely their path ; however, it prevents players being softlocked in a dead end or forgetting something behind, as players can still go through corrupted zones, although with greater danger. In addition to that, each zone is affiliated to a faction, which determines one of the perks that will be offered when cleared. With the several bosses and NPCs scattered across the map, it does provide players different reasons to go through one biome or the other : should I get through these 3 Fire zones to get more Fire perks, or should I go through this one to meet the NPC, or is it even worth getting there if I have to go through a corrupted biome on the way out ?

We also decided to implement transitory zones between the main zones ; these intervals would be less impactful on the player's progression, but could still offer substantial content, like currencies, shops and hidden secrets useful for metaprogression. After going through several consecutive iterations, they ended up being wider zones in which the player can roam more freely.

In all of these steps of design and decision-making, as the Lead Level Designer, I have been trying to have an overview of the final level design. With some help from my colleagues Alexis and Nicolas R., iteration after iteration, little by little, we had this world take shape.

The narrative design was an important bit of the initial concept as well: as part of the discovery dynamic, we wanted the players to put the storyline back together bit by bit, and uncover the veil of what had happened to this place. My colleague Nicolas R. was lead narrative designer and writer on the project, and as such he gave the overall direction, and wrote the scenario for the game. I, as supporting narrative designer, then pieced together the story beats and how we would allow the player to apprehend the story.

Our main way of conveying the story was another important feature of the game: the glyphs. We decided early on that we would like to have a cryptic alphabet in the game, taking inspiration from Tunic and Chants of Sennaar among others. The aim was to crypt the rough history of the world on a monolith, and have the player find words little by little to translate bit by bit. We also wanted to give every perk a glyph translation, so that narration would come out through these convoluted ways as well.