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RED SAILS:
Red Sails is an exploration and adventure game that takes place in a desert where the sand swallows everything: houses, resources to survive, people and especially the links between them.
In this game, you play as a man named Sil. Your goal is to save the people of the desert, talk to them and restore their trust in each other.
To achieve your goal and explore the desert, you have a sailboat. The navigation gameplay is semi-realistic and does not aim at simulation. It is by learning to control your ship, by taking the best of the winds by orienting your sail, that you will manage to navigate in the dunes.
FUGUE INTERACTIVE:
Fugue Interactive is a Parisian video game development studio founded in 2020, initially created by ISART Digital students after graduation around their end-of-study project, which they decided to push further than the vertical slice that had been made.
During the 4 months of my internship, the studio was composed of 8 people (including 2 interns, myself included). The development team occupied the premises for a period. Today, each member of the team works remotely.
WHAT I'VE DONE:
- Design and implement one area of the open world map.
- Design points of interest and locations of the area.
- Design levels of each quest of the area.
- Code tools to calculate and define easier metrics.
TOOLS:
- Unity 3D
- In-house tools
- Git/GitHub Desktop
- Blender
MY TIME AS AN INTERN:
After 4 years of studying Game Design and Level Design, I had only one desire, to work on a project in a studio in order to put my skills into practice. It was important for me to take stock of my academic background and my professional desires.
I had the opportunity to work with another level designer who arrived in the studio the same day as me, which allowed me to easily integrate into the team, to learn about the project more efficiently and quickly. Working in a team was the best part of this internship. I was able to considerably improve my skills and methodology by adapting them to the needs and constraints of the project.
The biggest difference that I've experienced while working on Red Sails compared to the game projects in school is how much more time there is for polish. At Rubika we always had to push ourselves just to have a complete game with enough content to pass.
It has been great to be able to iterate more and get feedback from the other designers.
DESIGN CHALLENGES:
Working on the Red Sails project was challenging both in terms of the problems induced by the concept and the context in which it was produced:
As far as the concept is concerned, the game has a sailboat as its main avatar. Unlike a navigation game, here you don't leave your boat to explore a village or a temple, you explore it on board. This required a rethinking of movement and navigation, especially in the smaller and narrower game environments.
Secondly, one of the main game systems is the way the desert works: It acts like a giant quicksand and swallows everything that is static. The player has to stay in constant motion, which, coupled with the previous issue, requires extra care in navigating the game so that it is not too punishing or frustrating.
Secondly, one of the main game systems is the way the desert works: It acts like a giant quicksand and swallows everything that is static. The player has to stay in constant motion, which, coupled with the previous issue, requires extra care in navigating the game so that it is not too punishing or frustrating.
As for the context, the realization of an Open World game, with a structure comparable to a Zelda Breath of the Wild, was particularly trying because of its ambition. The team being composed of only 8 members, the amount of content to produce was important for the expected deadlines.
SCREENSHOTS:
