Wayward Woods

“Wayward Woods” was my capstone project from my final year at Bradley University, developed and produced over the course of the full school year. 

CONCEPTION

At the start of August, our team playtested different prototypes created the previous year to use as inspiration for our capstone. After that, out of the three concepts we came up with, the final pitch was for a turn-based strategy with a cast of cutesy animal characters set in a fantasy forest.

Refining our idea further, we settled on having only a single character instead to fit inside our project’s timeline. Additionally, we chose to make their abilities revolve around elements such as lightning and wind with the hopes of building around emergent combos, either through environmental reactions or between individual abilities.

CONTRIBUTIONS

While I worked on systems design, I also had a significant impact on the UI layouts seen throughout the game. 

During the first half of the project, I mainly focused on designing interactive wireframes in Figma for the combat menu, as well as the equipment menu seen between levels. These wireframes were then used as references by our UX artists to create assets.

In our second semester, I transitioned to working on the game’s combat systems, focusing on spell functionality and balancing. During this time, I not only reimagined existing spells, but helped conceptualize new ones: “Electric Flux” and “Zap Step” were spells I personally had a pivotal role in developing. After that, I aided in balancing the damage, range, and cost of both Lightning and Wind spells right up until release.