Escape Fort Wintertide
Escape Fort Wintertide is a compact open world survival adventure game, where the player must manage limited resources surviving the cold, exploring the woods, avoiding roving monsters, and fueling generators in order to power the radio and escape.
Created with a small team over the course of a week as a part of the NDQA game jam, I led the effort that oversaw the creation of the map, layout of the points of interest and resources, and the environment assets.
Creating an open exploration level in only a week required a strong vision. The player starts at the center of the map, surrounded by trees. The points of interest - and the ultimate goals - are tall, well illuminated waypoints that help to keep things oriented from the woods.
Throughout the entire level, special consideration was paid to view corridors and line of sight, making it so that wherever the player wanders, they will have clear ideas on where to proceed to the next goal.
A significant consideration during development was the careful placement of the acquirable fuel. The fuel is used for both staving off the cold and powering the generators which are required to escape. As such, it is possible for players to find themselves in a unwinnable situation and slowly die.
Repeat playtesting and behind the scenes math allowed me to place enough fuel in accessible points to minimize players trapping themselves.
4-Day Week
Jayden Sparhawk - Narrative
Dominic Nguyen - Design
Shae Soulter Willet - Design
Joey Fici - Design, Level Design
Richard Cottrell - Level Design, Art
Mitchell Sikorski - Level Design, Production
Evan Spytek - Art
Gabriel Samaro - Audio