Zenocite is a top down action stealth endless runner, created for Global Game Jam 2018 at Teesside University. With a theme of Transmission, our team of seven decided to create an action stealth game where you are a virus moving between hosts to get as far through a scientific facility as possible before you kill your host.
My work was primarily focused on the AI and developing their behaviours using Unreal Engine’s Behaviour Trees. As a team we wanted something that felt tense and with high stakes, we decided to make failure quick but the AI very predictable. To accomplish this, we decided to make the game end whenever a guard sees the player. This created excellent tension for the players and, with the quick restart times, created an old school arcade feel to the experience.
The AI I developed needed to be predictable, so I created a simple patrol system that told the AI which direction to go next. Using this, the Level designer crafted 6 preconstructed rooms that the systems randomly select between. This was primarily done for time’s sake, but we found it added to the experience as with only 6 rooms, players could in the time frame of our playtest, learn the patrols of the guards to get better at the game. This was an unintended consequence to our design decisions we decided to keep as we felt it was a fun and allowed for some progression in such a simple game.
We wanted the game to be fast paced as our play session would not be more than a few minutes. So, we decided to add a timer limiting the player to a short amount of time in each body. This forces the players to think quickly and move fast, though doesn’t stop plays from waiting for a guard to move round the corner so they can escape. We attempted to implement a dynamic timer, where the timer would slowly reduce the more you got into the game. We decided to remove this feature due to time constraints but it would have been good to add increasing challenge later on in the game.
I have recently updated the textures and other visual elements. This was done to improve the general aesthetic of the game as well as improve visibility of the sight cone.