EducatEd Play!
shadows of abigail
Finding EmErgEnt Fun
As pArt of the University of CentrAl floridA in orlAndo, the floridA interACtive entertAinment ACAdemy provides An intensive
trAining progrAm thAt Aims to refleCt the reAlities of CommerCiAl gAme development. ShadowS of abigail is A teAm effort from
stUdents At the fieA And we spoke with leAd designer steve JUlson And proJeCt leAd/gAme plAy progrAmmer José lUis lópez
zUritA to find oUt how the 3d plAtformer CAme together in only six months.
Jeffrey Fleming: What
was your prototyping
process like?
Steve Julson: We first
prototyped with the
Unreal Development Kit
to determine what types
of platforming would fit
the best with our shooting
mechanic. It was after
this that we realized
how beneficial LittLe Big
PLanet’s level editor was
for our prototyping. Once
we discovered the MetaL
gear SoLid mod for LBP,
which provided the player
with a physics-based
projectile weapon that
would influence other
physics-based objects, we
immediately went to work
putting all of our paper
designs to test.
At FIEA, the importance
of prototyping was
stressed in order to
successfully understand
what specific mechanics
needed to be hashed out
and to know what was fun,
intuitive, and potentially
emergent. As lead
designer, it was beneficial
to make a convincing
prototype in LBP because
the other designers could
rally around it and feel that
we had a serious trajectory
for our concepts.
JF: I like the idea of finding
emergent play during
prototyping. What were
some bits of emergent fun
that you hadn’t planned
out ahead of time and
instead discovered during
prototyping?
SJ: We found one aspect
of emergent game play
while we were using the
Metal Gear Solid mod for
LBP. I had been thinking
about how the projectile
allowed us to move certain
physics objects around
the game space. After
moving the objects around
horizontally, I then built
a tower where I shot the
objects down vertically.
I then thought to myself,
“How can I move these
up?” So using this same
tower area, I placed little
launchers that I could
activate to throw the
objects into the air, where I
shot at them, moving them
onto an ledge while in air.
It was a lot of fun, and we
returned to this concept a
lot in ShadowS.
gamE dEvEloPEr | January 2011 58
cart that Abigail would
pull and push to catch
falling objects inside. We
made the cart a physics
object so it would react
to her appropriately. Well,
one of the designers
hopped inside the cart
and began shooting the
inside of the cart, which
made it move forward.
Repeatedly shooting the
cart made it zoom 40
miles an hour through the
level. We stood around
the computer laughing
for 30 minutes until we
remembered we had to
have a final build in the
next 48 hours!
JF: How did game play
evolve over the course of
developing the game?
José Luis López Zurita:
The game was pitched
as a 2.5D platformer, but
we really wanted to do
something unique to it. We
analyzed many games in
this genre trying to find
how to create something
with a little twist. 2D
arcade shooters are so
populate that it is difficult
to innovate on them. The
first prototype mixed an
old school 2D platformer
style with a 3D platformer/
puzzling gameplay. Each
enemy reacted differently
when attacked, but all of
them had a common design
pattern and their reaction
could trigger chains of
reactions in other enemies.
JF: Did you have a
separate art team from
level design, or did
everyone have multiple
responsibilities?
SJ: Our art team carried
our game for the first five
weeks of development.
We actually had such a
strong art team that they
were creating art assets
before designers could put
an official stamp on the
design-required assets.
This created a broken
design pipeline where we
were incorporating their
assets into our design,
rather than us telling them
what we needed.
We designers were
actually slowing down the
artists who could pump
