Narrative, Mission, and Game Play Designer
General Design Process
In the very early stages Fragment was actually a first person shooter where the player could make use of their psychic powers to fire off shots from their finger tips to destroy enemies at range. Our trademark clones were present with their Picture in Picture cameras but their functionality was quite different. At that point they also had the ability to shoot at and destroy enemies and were based on a learning AI system where they would copy and mimic the actions of the player.
This is an image of an early prototype, during this stage we used a lot more corridors and narrow spaces as the game more closely resembled a standard first person shooter. Later these types of corridors were removed from the game as they didn't lend themselves to the stealth game play we were after.
This diagram represents the original concept for both an element of the UI and the general concept for the AI of the fragments. As the player performed different actions it would make the clones act in different ways. The clones behavior is based on their position on the matrix above. The 3 corners represent Attack, Defence and Range, this broadly affects the way they interact with enemies.
General Design Process Part 2
From here we realized that the general premise of the game was interesting but that there wasn't anything especially fun about it. The players were quite capable of sending in the fragments and letting them just work their way through the levels. It seemed that our AI had in fact outsmarted us. We needed a way to take a more direct hand in the use of the clones. At this stage we shifted the game to a more squad command game where the player could send the clones off to do their bidding by way of a flag marker system.
In this stage of development the cost of creating a fragment was that it reduced the range and damage of the players basic attack, which at the time was still a ranged shooting attack.
During this stage of development we had a different enemy still in the game. This was our 'heavy', he is big and bulky and has a mini gun that turns out a plethora of shots in a massive hurry. The UI-718 was designed to be big and intimidating and to help set the mood of the stage with the unnerving humming noise it makes when it moves.
General Design Process Part 3
At this point we realized that the employment of 4 clones was never going to work so we settled on just 2. We also realized that the payers wanted to be able to interact with the clone in a much more serious way. In the span of 3 days we hammered out 12 different mechanics and brought in a batch of play testers to figure out which ones were the most fun. These mechanics included; switching places to the clone, 'sliding' to his position, clone self destruct, a super jump, the ability for the clone to be deployed out of a 'pokeball', the ability to self replicate, and the ability to pop out of the other side of very specific walls among others. Finally we settled on the 'sliding' teleport and the self destruct.
This was the final design that we settled on for our main character so that he could stop being a generic model in a T-pose.
This was one of our first enemies, the Shield Enemy, at this stage he was cut because it was decided that he didn't fit the game thematically. He was the original inspiration for creating a clone and having them act as a diversion.
General Design Process Part 4
This was the last real phase of major change that we had before we started polishing up what we had. The biggest change was the loss of the second clone, bringing us down to just the final single clone. We also made the final swing to a full stealth/assassination style game instead of the shooter it used to be. From here on out it was a matter of polish and iteration.
Lastly we added in our final boss fight, the sweet giant spider bot! If you're interested in fighting it then I recommend you go HERE and download and play 'Fragment'.