ULF ENOK NORD
Narrative designer & Generalist
ELDRITCH BEAST
Unreal 4, team size 1, Did everything. Top down dungen crawler
Eldritch Beast was the game I had in my portfolio to get into Future Games. It’s a display of enemy AI behaviors with some gameplay. It was the second game I had ever made with the unreal engine and my first real try at making enemy AI.
Video
AI BEHAVIOUR
With the same goal
The enemy design is focused around limiting the player movement, all enemies in one way or another have the ability to limit player movement (even if such an ability is a simple follow command).
NARRATIVE WITH BEHAVIOUR
Play metaphor
The reasoning for the enemies behaviour design is narrative based, as the title of the game suggests the game was eldritch horror inspired. The original idea was a haunted castle with an evil corrupted lord.
​
I wanted to tell a story of how impossible the odds were as well as how out matched and easily trapped the player character was in the evil lords domain. So to that end I made it the enemies main function to limit movement of the player as a metaphor for the player character's ever diminishing options.
ENEMIES
BEAST
Charger tank
AI BEHAVIOUR
Beast is an enemy that chases the player until it is within range for an attack. When the player is in range, the enemy finds the player's location and waits for a short period of time before charging past that location. The enemy stands still for a second before continuing chasing the player until it is in range again.
COMBAT FUNCTION
The Beast’s function is to force the player to make short term positioning adjustments, as well as forcing the player to reassess the space it has to maneuver. By moving past the player it makes its linear motion a hurt zone, as it blocks that area.
SLIME
Swarmer
AI BEHAVIOUR
Slime simply moves towards the player’s location and attacks on impact.
COMBAT FUNCTION
The Slime is a fodder enemy which means that it’s not there to be a serious threat, instead it's there to make the player move when it comes close to avoid unnecessary damage. This is to make the player move around during a fight, since the player cannot stay in a small part of the arena. This ensures that the player interacts with more enemies as it moves around. The Smile’s function is mainly there to keep the pace up.
EYE CULTIST
Direction Denial
AI BEHAVIOUR
An Eye cultist will see the player and then it runs away, after which it will start to fire lasers in front of the player. The laser hitbox lasts for a short time and is visualized as a purple block, the laser will block the player from moving in the direction they where going disrupting their movement. Lasers will hurt the player if the player touches the block.
COMBAT FUNCTION
The Eye Cultist’s lasers are there to stop the player from moving in just one direction. As it appears in front of the player, it stops the player from running in that direction, forcing the player to rethink movements and dealing with local threats.
AI BEHAVIOUR
Tower is a thin creature that moves on predetermined paths. When it see the player it will start firing slow moving projectiles at the player’s location while moving.
TOWER
Moving Turret
COMBAT FUNCTION
Tower’s threat is hard to deal with, as it always moves and fires endless projectiles towards the player. It’s the main threat in most combat encounters, but is often the last enemy to be dealt with, due to its movement. It should be noted that it only starts firing when it can see the player, and that its sight range is rather short, so it can be played around.
SHOOTING
The tower's shooting is always aimed at the player, but as the projectiles it fiers are slow so they act more like bullet hell games.
WIZARD
AOE-blocker
AI BEHAVIOUR
The Wizard works much like the Eye Cultist, it runs when it sees the player, but unlike the Eye Cultist it actively hides. After hiding, it will start casting spells, which starts slowly covering the floor with symbols. These symbols are hitboxes, but will not hurt the player until the symbols are fully formed.
COMBAT FUNCTION
The Wizard AOE’s attack appears slowly underneath the player’s feets. If the player does not react fast and escape the spells AOE it has to rethink and reevaluate the area it now has to abide by. As most enemis force player movement, an enemy that restricts movement by replacing play area with a damage zone will become a serious problem for the player and it forces the player to think around what area it has to play on, which flips the combat on its head. As long as a Wizard lives, the player is forced to think ahead not to trap themselves against a wall and to be ready to react to avoid being stuck in the spells zone in the first place. One example of this kind of thinking could be to get close to an Eldritch Beast to activate its attack, in the hope that it will be stuck waiting when the Wizard’s spell is in effect.
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF A SPELL IN ACTION
The player is currently being followed by Slimes and a Beast just charged past it and to make things worse the player is also trapped in a spell.
There is only one way for the player to not take damage in this scenario.
The player has to first move into that crevice in the spell, to avoid the Beast, then when the enemy runs past the player, it must turn back.
But if the player simply turns back the Slimes will hit it on its way back, so to avoid that the player must, on the way into the crevice, move as close to the top wall of that spell as possible. This will make the Slimes to move up, for avoiding the Slimes by moving below them on the return trip.
