Howl of Iron
A Third Person Adventure game that combines Action and Stealth genres. Made with Unreal Engine.
Steamfall, the city of steam, is ruled by a military dictatorship imposed by red gear.
Vincent Volk, an engineer who decides to dehumanize himself after losing all his loved ones, will try to get its revenge.
LAUNCH DATE: November 2022
DEVELOPER: 16 Gears
TAGS: Beat ’em Up, Adventure, Stealth, Third Person, Single Player
Platform:
Windows
Engine:
Unreal Engine 4
Language:
Blueprints & C++
Duration:
9 months
Completion:
November, 2022
Team Size: 17
Role:
Game Design, Technical Design, UI Design, Tool Programming, Combat Design
Overview
Howl of iron is a 3rd person action title with blends of stealth. The city offers several paths and heights to move and attack. Travel through the streets of Steamfall your way. Explore back-to-back each section to find the patrols’ weak spots. Climb buildings to attack from above and escape unfavorable encounters.
I worked as Game Designer and Technical Designer on this game as my Master’s Degree Final Project.
I employed this opportunity to improve my pitch and design skills, managing a fully development process.
Project Design Goals
- Improve my skills designing mechanics for a Third Person Adventure video game.
- Improve my scripting skills as a Technical Designer making different tools for designers.
- Improve my skills designing combat and enemies.
- Improve my skills designing UI with Unreal Engine.
- Improve my skills using Gameplay Ability System.
Detailed Info
- Designed and prototyped most of the core mechanics and systems, including, among others:
- Data-Driven Character System: The first version for the character creation system.
- This system consisted of generating the different characters of the game around data instead of around inheritance.
- This method was prototyped, but excluded from the final version of the game due to the low quantity of characters needed for this project.
- The entire documentation about this system can be read here.
- Combat System: This system was implemented by using Gameplay Ability System (GAS).
- Light and Heavy Attacks: Montages and transition between attacks.
- Impacts (UX related): Camera Shake, Particles, blur.
- Attack Effects (flyback, pushback, etc.).
- Magnetism between attacks to get closer to the enemy.
- Cutscene System: Made custom triggers to play cutscenes during the game (after executing an enemy, after reaching a place, ect.).
- Save Game System: Used Game Instance and Save Game object to save the player data during the game.
- Data-Driven Character System: The first version for the character creation system.
- Designed and Implemented the User Interface (UI):
- Worked pair to pair with programming members.
- Implemented main menu: Title Menu, Buttons (New Game, Continue, Settings, Credits, Quit), responsiveness.
- Implemented the tutorial and a Tooltip System to show videos and tips during the playthrough.
- Made multiple Tools for Level Designers & Artists: During the project, as a Technical Designer, I developed multiple tools to enhance productivity of team members.
- Mesh Distribution Tool: This tool allowed level designers and artists to place objects in a faster way. Its applications can be seen here.
- Mesh Replacing Tool: This tool allowed the artists to replace the scenario proxies by the final mesh selecting the old one and the new one.
- Custom Trigger Tool: This is the tool used for all the triggers in the game. Every trigger has a list of listeners and events that are called when a actor overlap it and executes custom functions.
- Successfully pitched the game to different stakeholders.