Deadzone: Aberration

Background

Deadzone is a narrative driven, 3D first person shooter game with around 40 minutes of engaging gameplay with 15 unique levels and is all completely free to play on Dreams. The world has been completely taken over by a monstrous infection, with fierce robots oppressing the people. Shoot, stab, or blow up monsters and enemy robots, collecting new unlockable upgrades you'll find along your journey. This game features an original game soundtrack, along with a fully voice acted cast. This game was made primarily by a team of 4, in the span of over 2 years, with an estimated ~6,000 hours of combined development time (Roughly equivalent to ~€120k of professional labour).

Accolades and Achievements

Deadzone: Aberration was featured by Media Molecule several times during the Impy awards, two twitch live playthroughs and as the pick of the week. It also received one of the last Mm Pick awards before they ended community support with Dreams, giving it a stamp of approval as one of the must-play essential games on Dreams from the developers.

As of writing this, the game has been played by over 35k players, with over 50k plays, receiving widespread praise through the comments and reviews of the game. Below are a few of examples this game received.

Received front page Pick of the week and an Mm Pick from Media Molecule

The Journey

Deadzone has been an integral part of my game development experience especially when it came to learning to work with a team together. The team consisted of around 4 key members, with a few others jumping into help where needed. A key motive that drove us together was the director Chris Grieco, who kept us informed with weekly scheduled group meetings and a Trello board to track the games needed features and fixes. We all worked together on this as a passion project with no pay incentive, with huge creative freedom to help on all aspects of the project.

I primarily worked on all of the following maps listed below, designing the gameplay, layouts, animating large sequences, modelling, programming and lighting. Early work started with optimizations & polish, e.g. skyboxes, character rig reworks, and reworking enemies / boss fights. Learning how to create fun gameplay by improving the user experience was the core philosophy I followed, taught completely through team feedback and frequent playtests. Changes and reworks would happen constantly in response to user feedback, such as reducing complexity in learning new mechanics so that it can be more accessible and have less cognitive load.

Trello board for planning, assigning and completing tasks with each other.

Custom text based facial expression rig built for animated cutscenes.

My first work on Deadzone with custom skyboxes.

Clowntown

Clowntown is the first introductory map, designed to teach the user about the world of Deadzone and its gameplay mechanics. This is set inside a dream circus world, surrounded by carnival games, robots, monsters, floating islands with a carousel and Ferris wheel.

There are 4 separate carnival games that each teach a core aspect of the players arsenal. The left side teaches how to properly utilize the electric and fire goo grenades to burn and stun for both monsters and robots. Games on the right side teach how to properly use the D.A.C.R (Dual Action Combat Rifle), which is a gun that can switch between a shotgun and a machine gun.

Throughout the experience, your friend ROB guides you through each of these optional tutorials. The player can work to achieve a better high-score and earn currency they can use on upgrades.

Originally, the 4 carnival mini-games played very linearly, forcing the user to beat each one after the other so that they understood the controls. This turned out boring and condescending, especially for already experienced players with FPS games. After the 3rd iteration of the map design, the minigames became optional and connected to a central island instead so the player could better choose what to do.

It was crucial that this map would immediately catch the players eyes with the world and game mechanics, which is why it went through so many revisions. There needed to be a hook that caught the player within the first 30 seconds, to stay invested in playing more. That's why the world was scattered with clear POI's for what they choose to do, inspired by Bioshock: Infinite for its optional but rewarding games to teach core mechanics.

Another part to help establish the worlds monsters was through the freak show stand. An animatronic named Gizmo springs to life when the player first walks into the hub and performs a carnival act to show off the creeps and ghouls. These monsters try to lunge at you through their cage, also having removable limbs and burnable bodies when attacked so the player can safely understand them. Just to add to the reactivity, Gizmo's face could be torn apart in chunks when shot at.

I learned to respect the players by creating a fun and engaging collection of tutorials that often are completely subconscious. These core mini-games can be skipped, respecting the choice for experienced players. Plenty of hidden secrets and details were put into polishing the game so that players are encouraged to explore around and make it feel more alive.

The Alley

The player wakes up in the alley, right after the funhouse, to show what the real world looks like. The world is full of struggling robot NPC's who each have their own dialog and are doing their own activities.

Exploring the alley and listening to other robots is encouraged, where you can find funny interactions and some hints of stashes. Several stashes of credits & scrap can be found in hidden locations if you search hard enough.

All the names of every NPC comes from the supporters that helped with this game in some way, which has been our way of saying thanks. Whenever the player is finished exploring, they can move onto ARI's apartment.

Ari's Apartment

ARI's apartment occurs right after the alley, where ROB and the player pay a visit to their good friend and rebel against corruption; ARI. This level progresses the story with a fully animated sequence to plan a heist.

Her room is filled with details all over the walls, desks and scattered on the floor, in an untidy mess. Kept behind the mirror is a keypad for the hidden secret lair behind the fridge. Inside are server racks, her desk, an arcade machine and a whole lounge filled with decorations.

During the cutscene, ROB and ARI scheme a plan to rob a supposed hidden stash that the villain DEV has been hiding.

ARI was designed as your partner in crime that helps talk with you over the comms device throughout the game. She can fight in combat but that was scrapped after cancelling future chapters of the game.

Animating this entire sequence of around 3 and a half minutes took 2 days to complete. It's full of subtle movements that help enhance the experience like using the computer and facial expressions.

Unfortunately, this sequence breaks the flow of the combat heavy gameplay before and drags on longer than it should. That is why many players decide to completely skip this scene, which was a lesson well learned when it comes to properly timing cutscenes. To help keep the player occupied, the entire apartment is full of scattered references and details that reveal more lore, also including an arcade machine to play a minigame.

The Lab

Inside the vault you find the key to open, the lab is revealed. Secretly, DEV has been expanding his empire by producing more and more assault & heavy bots to help with his operations.

Outside the production line lies an even larger facility, separated by a gap of hanging platforms you must jump across. This is where the lab is revealed, full of test tubes of monsters protected inside. Clearly DEV is up to no good and it is your job to uncover the true secret behind it all.

This level went through a few revisions to add a more interesting change of scenery, rather than one long corridor. Particularly the parkour sections are meant to hint at a more ominous operation, with its large structures to invoke a megalophobia fear. Having full creative freedom allowed for fun lighting effects to highlight and separate into split colour palettes.

The Hybrid

The Hybrid's attack for creating a wave of creep arms and summoning ghouls.

The Hybrid is the final boss of Deadzone, an experiment gone wrong when the creeps infection combined with the assault bots. While exploring the laboratory, you fall into the pit and the hybrid releases from its chamber. Its a boss fight with 3 stages and a total of 9 attack moves that it tries to kill you with. It also has 5 heads and a hidden fetus in its chest that it shields.

The first stage is about attacking the glowing heads, while it attacks you. When each head dies, the connecting limb goes limp. In the second stage, shield beacons raise from the ground and make the Hybrid invulnerable but can be destroyed with the help of some fireball grenades. Over time, it becomes more aggressive and attacks with even more moves.

Last phase combines everything but it starts defending its fetus as it starts to lose each head. ROB is constantly helping you clear out ghouls and shooting down the assembly line of assault bots for ammo. Finally, once its core is exposed, you can finish the Hybrid off and witness the games last cutscene.

The original design was to keep the Hybrid suspended by wires and chains, surrounded by TV's. That was meant to emphasize the Hybrid's weakness to electricity, where an animation had it yanking the power cables out. This idea was scrapped because of the scene design conflicts, set inside a lab instead.

Over time, the map went through redesigns and the Hybrid was kept inside a pod. Combat was improved with more structured phases, getting progressively more difficult, like with their shield.

The video has the first implementation of the shield beacons that make it invulnerable. Beams focus on the boss and when it was shot, its invulnerability was made clear with a protective coat of electricity. This was inspired by Minecrafts ender dragon, so the colour of the beam was changed so it wasn't too on the nose.

It was clear, there needed to be a way to resupply. To provide ammo and connect the previous map, the assault bot production line was made to pass over the boss fight. Ammo could be gained from shooting them on the ceiling; one lane was red for shotgun shells and the other had machine gun ammo.

During playtests, players often didn't see or understand how to get ammo and especially since they were too focused on the fight. The solution was to have ROB up on a catwalk, helping you by shooting the necessary ammo type down when you were low. This also encouraged players to constantly swap between gun types during combat, adding to the engagement.

First test adding beacons for Hybrid invulnerability.

This boss uses a state machine, built around all of its moves and the different phases it goes through. It was a challenge programming into this system that had to be kept dynamic because of playtests. Another issue was dealing with bugs that would occur on random frame perfect stuns during transitions, which were fixed with a safer system of transitions.

I managed to learn so much on my experience creating such a dynamic fun boss fight that could end the chapter on a high note, combining all knowledge the player previously learned. If I could make any changes to the Hybrid, I would either foreshadow the beacons in a safe setting or remove them entirely. In the end, it didn't fit in as cleanly as I had hoped because they were too confusing to learn during combat.

Post Mortem

I am very proud to have shaped the game in such a meaningful way, down to the art, programming, game design, and animation. I'm especially thankful to have had so many people help me out during the entire process; Aecert for the guidance, Dónall for the Hybrid model, David for helping with polish and Chris for directing. This whole project wouldn't have been possible without all the tireless effort from everyone that contributed and I'm so grateful to have been a core part of the team that helped deliver this game. I hope to one day revisit this series as it holds a very special place in my heart.