Black Death

Duration: 4 Weeks
In collaboration with : Arindam Das, Kirti Mathur, Nishant Mohite, Rohan Vivera

Tools:

About

Play as a Plague Doctor present in the Bubonic Plague and help as many houses survive as possible .
A resource Management game in which the player needs to treat the patients and manage the administration and crafting of medicines to cure the patients.
The player needs to constantly monitor the health of the patients in the houses and periodically administer cures while searching for more effective treatments.

Gameplay

Black Death is set up during the Dark ages when death and destruction ravaged the life of innocents. Play as a Bubonic plague doctor who roams the infected streets treating houses and help them live another day. But beware, the treatment is not permanent and people can get re-infected and slip back into the grasp of the plague. Craft stronger medicines to make the people more resilient to the infection.

Alas, if a family succumbs to the plague, corpses start to form and the doctor needs to find a way to dispose them off before they increase the spread of the Black Death.

The scene is set during the outbreak of the bubonic plague where living was a task and surviving was an even tougher chore. Survive to live another day...or don’t.

Game Loop

Brainstorm

Worked upon various aspects in the first week of the project. Penned down math, mechanics and maps for the game, with the team.

Iterations

Wrote a script for player navigation through a mesh overlay on the map. Worked on collision physics and figured out optimum values for a better game flow.

Started out with blocking out all the NPC bodies and making a basic map for the game.

Worked on player world interactions through UI elements and time functions looped in the engagement of actions.

Map is procedural generated through script by fetching data on game progression.

Insights after play testing

Herb and Material bar do not properly depict the quantity that the player has.
Notification for when the player has insufficient herbs to craft.
Player uncertain about how the next part of the map unlocks.
No proper indication to depict when a house that is outside the screen is about to die.
No proper “Full” Notification for the farm. Happens only when the player hover the mouse over the farm.

Game Math

Mechanics

HERB COLLECTION

Herbs are collected from farms once the player needs to refill the herb satchel or storage in subsequent levels. The farm gives notifications to collect herb when full.

HOUSE INTERACTION

Player interacts with the house on the map and notes the requirements. The player then dispenses the amount of herb required and collect reward in return. The time limit over a house shows what's the state of plague effect on that house. If you miss the next window to give med the house dies and becomes corpse which need to be disposed soon before it spreads disease in neighborhood.

MEDICINE CRAFTING

Medicines are crafted with the help of acquired recipe Intel. Using required resources and agents, medicines are made and perfected for better impact.

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Future Iteration Of the Game

Add a quest update marker for houses that are about to die which are off screen.
Incorporate the Corpse Management and Infection Spread System.
Introduction of stronger cures and agents for managing a larger areas.
Introduction of NPCs to help the player perform various actions like cultivation of herbs, Upgradation of the farm, Building storages, etc.