Root Directory
Root Directory is a puzzle platformer that's set in a digital screen inside a derelict world. You transfer from screen to screen and platform using the website contents.
Will you find out what has happened? Or will you ignore the warnings like everyone else?
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Genre: Platformer
Platform: PC (Keyboard
controls only)
Engine: Unreal Engine
Development
In the short time of 48 hours, we as a team managed to create a platformer that delivers a narrative via writing and environmental changes. As the scrum master, it was essential that I coordinated the team to stay on track and get development underway as soon as we could.
After a quick brainstorming session, we found the idea that drew us in and we got to prototyping. Immediately I started sketching out some levels that would both serve as a platforming level whilst also being presented as a website. I then gave these sketches to our writer to fill in the gaps with the blocks and sizes predefined.
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The rest of the development was lots of expanding, tweaking, and reiterating ideas and a whole lot of polish. It was all hands-on right up until the deadline.
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Working alongside artists, programmers, writers, and audio students really helped bring this project to life and the value of learning from different specialists was exceedingly useful moving back into our university game projects.
Screenshots
Our well rounded team of artists and programmers worked well together. As the only designer it was a very stressful 48 hours doing all of the level design but it was never too much with the rest of the team working quickly and creating some great assets even out of their specialisms
I really like the subtle nature of storytelling using all aspects of the game. Not only do we have a narrative within the blog posts and websites but we have more and more decayed rooms as you go through the game
The final section of the game asks the player to input a sequence of letters. The answer is not at first obvious but eventually you'll find the answer. We also built a tooltip for if you get stuck called "Clampy" similar to the windows helper
Our well rounded team of artists and programmers worked well together. As the only designer it was a very stressful 48 hours doing all of the level design but it was never too much with the rest of the team working quickly and creating some great assets even out of their specialisms