The Tribe of Dawn
A mix between narrative gaming and RTS
You control a nomadic tribe living on a huge creature.
The night harbors danger. It is chasing you and you must keep moving forward into the light.
Explore, build, pray and heal mysterious beings on your way.
Teaser
Context of the project
The Tribe of Dawn is a student project carried out in the 2nd year of Master JMIN at cnam ENJMIN .
The instruction is to create a vertical slice and present 10 minutes of game experiences at the end of the project.
Development began in early November 2021 and was completed in early/mid-February 2022. This represents just under 4 months of production.
The team is made up of:
Ace Kohlmoos
System Designer
Antoine Lima De Carvalho
Narrative Designer
Eva Rebillat
Level Designer
Antonin Terrien
Sound Designer
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Pierre-Emmanuel de Martel
Composer
Guillaume Angeli
Project Manager
Alice Gregoire
3D Artist
Armel Morvan
3D Artist
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Alice Rameau
3D Artist
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Yann Kukolewky
UI Artist
Valentin Posadas
UX/UR Designer
Clara Toussaint
UI Designer
Basil of Lamberterie
Programmer
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Aurelien Harcaut
Programmer
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Leo Viguier
Programmer
The Tribe of Dawn
The planet
Our world is a small planet. Going around it would take players between 7 and 15 minutes.
It is composed of several biomes including 3 main ones: the Viscous Mangroves, the Rigid Mountains and the Fluffy Hills .
Each biome contains resources that the player will need to feed its inhabitants , feed the creature carrying the city on its back, or construct buildings .
They also bring their own set of difficulty close to each: crossing the Rigid Mountains will reduce your field of vision while the VIscous Mangroves will slow down anyone entering it.
Concept Art made by the graphic designers
The story
In the world of The Tribe of Dawn, night represents danger . Upon contact with it, your inhabitants will become intolerant of light and mad. If the creature holding your city is touched, it's game over .
This is due to a natural phenomenon: the Gyre . This one, several hundred years ago, bewitched most of the fauna present on your planet. Other Creatures like yours have entered a state of stasis near their shrine to protect their tribes.
You are the Tribe of Dawn, the only nomadic tribe on the planet, the one that continues to live in the light and your role in the Cycle is decisive. With the disappearance of the other tribes, the ancient rituals were forgotten. You will have to find them, heal the Creatures on your way but above all never stop moving forward.
The Tribe and the Creature
The Tribe comes from the Creature and lives in symbiosis with it. Each brings something to the other: shelter or food.
The Tribe is divided into 2 categories: the Dwellers ( Architects and Choristers ) who live on the back of the creature and the Pilgrims ( Gatherers and Priests ) who are on the ground. Each category has a well-defined role.
Creature Concept Art
Gameplay
In concrete terms, the player's actions will be:
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Explore and Gather Resources : Involves dispelling the fog of war , finding one's way and gathering resources appropriate to one's needs
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Pray and Build Buildings : the prayer system unlocks actions that can be performed in-game such as moving the creature or performing a ritual, while buildings serve as a bonus as long as they are supplied with resources
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Meet Asynchronous Pilgrims and treat them with Rituals : rituals are performed by Priests in the form of a dance
The long-term goal of the game is to heal all of the Pilgrims and Creatures and then sing all the prayers in a row to get rid of the mold.
Documents produced by my colleagues GD Antoine and Ace
My role and my work
The Tribe of Dawn includes 3 game designers: Antoine, Ace and myself. It's together that we developed the core gameplay of the game. Antoine focuses on Narrative Design, Ace on System Design while I focus on Level Design.
In this section I present my work as a Level Designer but also other points of the gameplay under my responsibility .
Camera
The Tribe of Dawn has several different cameras , each with their own uses.
A remote creature camera to better manage its units and environment.
A camera close to the creature to accurately visualize the actions performed such as rituals.
These cameras are free , the player can move around the illuminated side of the planet (so not into the night).
There is also a focus camera to, in 1 button, refocus on the Creature and follow it automatically.
Also a camera for buildings , fixed, on the back of the Creature. It is accompanied by a stoppage of time as well as a blurred landscape at the back.
LevelDesign
Exploration is important in The Tribe of Dawn. It is accompanied by a fog of war which dissipates as it approaches. It is reset with the passage of the night. In the final game, a minimap is present but also markers linked to the environment, significant places, an environmental narration allows the player to find his way around.
The map of our world is made up of tiles . It is generated procedurally in a first step and then the Level Design is done by hand: the tiles are moved manually.
Some tiles keep a procedural behavior with patterns that I defined after the Game of Life . I chose patterns that allow assets to loop indefinitely, 1 turn of the game of life corresponds to 1 turn of the planet. This system applies to resources and certain obstacles.
The goal is to create an environmental impact of the player: if they break the loop by harvesting 100% of a resource then in a few turns, the resources of this location will have disappeared, thus pushing the player to borrow another path (the spot is reset after 1 or 2 turns so as not to softlock).
Bubble Diagram made during the V2 of the level design based on the User Journey of my colleagues (step 1 to 5).
This document helps me to visualize the different spaces of my map.
The map is small and loop in x. The player completes one and a half laps in 10 minutes.
The game starts at spawn and ends when you come across the Asynchronous Creature a second time.
The player can realize several turns of the planet if they wants it before completing the game.
V3 of the Top View Map of the vertical slice.
It follows feedback from playtests: I specifically wanted to know the habits of the players in terms of harvesting resources, their understanding of the loop, the paths taken, possible blockages, measuring the difficulty, etc. ..
The playtests were carried out by our UX designer Valentin.
