Sam Russell - Game Design - The Fifth Blade (2023)

Project Type: Game Prototype

Development Period: 2023

Development Length: 6 Months

Contributors: 8

Genre: Arcanepunk, Horror

Skills Used:

World Design
Level Design
UI/UX

What is The Fifth Blade?

After falling into the ruins of an underground labyrinth you find yourself surrounded by darkness.

Avoid the gruesome monsters who roam these ancient chambers and illuminate your surroundings with ichor while searching for a way out.

Collect notes along the way to discover the secrets of this ancient society and learn from their mistakes.

Gameplay Trailer:

My Contributions - Level Design

The concept of The Fifth Blade is a development from my project Spatha merged with other team members ideas and writing, hence the focus on the titular sword the 'Fifth Blade'.

Originally, the plan was to have the games maze be generated procedurally and so the rooms needed to be modular. You can see this in the first 2 images with every room having an identical area, and is clearly marked by white outlines. Using these it would've generated a random grid of rooms that the player could explore but we later decided to contain our scope, and stick to a handmade level.

The early stages of this can be seen in the 3rd image, that still retains elements of the original blockouts, but has been expanded on and had an entrance and exit designed by another level designer. This was later set dressed by our team's artists, creating the version seen in the final game.

I also worked on creating a second level prototype that would have taken place after the first, but it was cut from the project due to time constraints and i instead focused on developing the UI.

First Blockout

Blockout Developments

Starting to take shape

Level 2 blockout

More of level 2

My Contributions - UI/UX

With the help of an artist to create the assets I made the UI and HUD for The Fifth Blade.

Using Unity's UI system I first made the main menu, which is used again In-Game with a transparency effect to show the game behind it. There are 3 sub-pages from this menu: Notes, Options and Help.

The Notes page acts as a collection screen for our games note pickups that are found throughout the level and written by our Narrative Writer. When a note is collected a popup above the players status bar appears, informing them of the note being collected, and it is then made availiable in the notes menu, where the player can then read it.

The Options Menu contains functional sliders for volume and brightness. as well as putting the UI together i also programmed the functions behind the sliders. Volume control is self explanitory, but the Brightness slider is intended to be a difficulty/accessibility implement that helps less experienced or visually impaired gamers to play our game.

The final piece i worked on was the games HUD, which consists of two status bars in the bottom left, Stamina and Light duration, which tick down to reflect how much longer you can sprint, or how long your light has left. The players screen also becomes redder at the edges as they take damage.