Soulbound Steel

MY WORK

Soulbound Steel is a game I made to experiment with the idea of fusing two game genres into one mechanic.

It’s a shooter and a hack n’ slash in a single button.

PROBLEM EXAMPLE #1: Teaching the block mechanic

Soulbound Steel’s top down shooting combat premise is relatively unique. Your bullets are actually animated characters that dash forward and attack enemies for you (they draw a lot of attention, which is one of the culprits for problem #2). The Block action calls your soldiers back towards your character, and any attacking units they phase through on the way back are parried and stopped.

  • I teach players with a mixture of very short messages, Forcing Functions (elements that prevent the player from moving forward without learning something first) and slow motion

Timing is especially important when blocking, as most enemies attack while dashing at the player, and can only be blocked while doing so. Later on in Level 1, I use yet another mixture of the elements mentioned in the bullet point above. This time it’s a strong enemy that kills you if you don’t block properly, sending you to a checkpoint nearby.

The first challenge is a pair of moving statues that chases the player and shoves them away upon contact.

PROBLEM EXAMPLE #2: Players Losing their Character

The first things I did to remedy this were adding a highly saturated indicator in the form of a Health Bar on top of the character and toning down the environment’s visual intensity.

Beginners still found it challenging to follow all elements on the screen, similarly to someone who has just been introduced to a MOBA. Considering I wanted a shorter barrier of entry than the mentioned genre, I made it so enemies that attack by lunging forward or jumping can only attack the player one at a time and take especially longer in their attack windup animations at early levels.

When the player takes damage, I trigger a highly saturated, animated indicator that briefly guides the player’s eyes towards their character.