Feather Weight
Position
Game Designer, Programmer
Description
A silly platformer where you morph between light, medium, and heavy forms to dash through obstacles, outsmart enemies, and explore a vibrant world brimming with adventure.
Duration
Engine
Spring 2024
Unity
Genre
Platformer
Platform
PC/Console
Core Statement
Light as a feather, Heavy as a Rock
Feather Weight is a 2d platformer gamer where the players can change the weight of their character to use its properties to traverse the environments. Drawing inspiration from Korean folklore, particularly the shapeshifting Dokkebi known for their magical tricks, players can utilize the different properties of their weight to get through obstacles and puzzles.
This game aims to give a whimsical but challenging platformer game where players can feel the flow of the different weights throughout the gameplay and feel freedom in movement once they master the controls.
The target audience is anyone between 8 to 40 years old, as the game is planned to be family-friendly and light-hearted.
Mechanics
Ori and the Blind Forest
Thowmp from Mario
The Mechanics of Feather Weight draws references from Ori and the Blind Forest for its game feel, and the Thwomp from Mario
Players will transition between light, medium and Heavy forms
Medium Mode
Players in medium mode can traverse the ground with more stability, which is the character's base form.
Light Mode
When players are in light mode, their weight is extremely light. They can jump higher than usual and their movement becomes feather-like.
They can traverse through air shoots in this mode, as they are light enough to be picked up by the air
Heavy Mode
Players are greatly slowed and can barely jump in the heavy mode. However, They will do incredible amounts of damage to the enemies when they shoot down from the air in the heavy mode
They can also traverse through water as the heavy mode, as other modes will float on the surface, but the heavy can traverse through water.
Design Process
This game was a bit of a challenge to prototype as there were many factors that had to be considered.
This is the list of variables that the player character is using to give the perfect snappy feel for the movements.
After multiple playtesting, there were two divided feed back from the players. Half of the players wanted the medium mode gone, but the other half wanted it to stay.
Now, the players must keep an eye on their usage of different modes when they transition to different states. This added tension to the levels as well, increasing the difficulty and mastery of the game's control.
I wanted to keep the medium mode as I felt like it represented the experience that I wanted to deliver more closely, so I decided to make the medium mode's functionality clearer by changing the level design to encourage the players to use the medium mode and by adding a cool down slider to the character.
Finally, there were additional obstacles added to further the diversity of the gameplay
