Stonefly
Key art by Adam Volker
“ Like Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Stonefly’s environment is as important as its characters — the push and pull between the two, the unnerving tension between humans and everything else around them”
Stonefly
Stonefly is an action-adventure RPG in which you pilot a tiny robot mech. Hop along rocks and canopies while you upgrade your rig with an arsenal of wind abilities. Follow the journey of Annika as she attempts to recover a stolen family heirloom, strategically battling bugs across an epic story
Responsibilities
My key responsibilities for Stonefly included the technical design and implementation of several systems ranging from combat and encounters to level design, items and quests.
Level and Quest Design
Alongside my Game Director Bohdon Sayre and Creative Director Adam Volker I was able to set up the pipelines to design each level and quest on paper by means of rough documentation and level layout sketches - this allowed us to implement the linear level and story progression for the whole game relatively quickly!
We were then able move into production by grey-boxing out more than 40 levels and set up each quest step in Unreal Engine so we could begin playtesting the pacing and space of each story beat- and begin determining when and where we wanted to place various level elements such as resources, objectives, and combat encounters.
Progression and Resource Economy
As we built out our goals for each level and mission - we quickly realized we needed to spend some time mapping out a proper resource and progression economy. I took on the responsibilities of determining the different types and cadence of resource spawning. I spent some time with Bo to set up the best plan for implementing different variations and types - these were tied to different environments.
These resources were a key part in the design of our combat encounters as the narrative design informed the behaviour of the “buggos” (the game’s main adversaries) as they are just hungry and will fight you for trying to steal their food.
The progression of finding new blueprints and schematics to upgrade the player’s rig tied deeply to the map and the resources - exploring the map and engaging in core mechanics (combat and resource gathering) is how Annika discovers new designs for her rig, and those designs cost resources to build.
We paced out all the resources and rig upgrades (with a few being tied directly to story missions) so the pacing of the overall experience felt rewarding and gave space for the carefully crafted story to unfold - adding some drama, excitement and intrigue at just the right points.
Check it out!
Combat Encounter Design
Between myself and the team we were able to brainstorm a ton of really fun movement and combat mechanics for the player’s rig - all designed with the narrative tone of “wind” and “non-lethality” being the key guiding factors.
To compliment and add appropriate challenges to the combat of Stonefly we designed and implemented several enemy “buggos” - each with their own sets of special abilities and attacks.
Part of my work included setting up the blueprints/ logic and statemachines for these Buggos to help bring them to life.
I also aided in the tech design set up for the combat encounter blueprints -these allowed us to select from our list of enemies to spawn as many waves with as many different types of buggos.
All the effort put into building tools that allowed us to quickly add encounters meant that we had time to build out 4 special levels called “Alpha Aphids” (resource rich, time pressure combat challenges) and 2 unique boss fights!
GDC - Indie summit - These non-violent delights: designing ‘stonefly’s’ combat
At GDC 2022 I had the immense privilege to present a talk at the Indie Summit titled “These Non-Violent Delights: Designing ‘Stonefly’s’ Combat”
”This talk covers the process, goals, challenges and lessons learned for Stonefly's non-lethal action adventure style combat, from a gameplay and narrative design perspective. Stonefly's Technical Game Designer, Mel Ramsden will discuss how the team approached these challenges using theme and setting to drive the decisions behind the systemic design of the combat, how these constraints led them to making a microscale mech game where you engage in king of the hill style arena battles, and how they designed a variety of non-lethal wind-based abilities the player could utilize in these battles to combat bugs - creating a gameplay loop that felt exciting, challenging but ultimately, non-violent”