Team : 4
Position : Game/level/sound designer
Duration : 4 months (2017)
Available here
PYKT is a 2D plateformer with a gameplay driven story. The player controls Circle, Square and Triangle, each one with its own ability, and try to let them out of a dark forest. We wanted to share an interactive tale about friendship, separation and overcoming loss.
PYKT was born out of our group’s intentions to make a poetic game on loss and separation driven by gameplay. Thus we had two main concept cores:
Friendship. We wanted strong, easily identifiable characters and decided to use simple geometric forms set up in an enchanted forest that needs to cooperate in order to advance.
Loss. The key element of the game is loosing members of the group as the story goes on, and the need to overcome challenges that would have been easy if they were still here.
As PYKT is a game, it is also a tale and a metaphor on relationships and separation that we wanted to be sensed through gameplay.
Because the game was a linear plateformer , I was able to use pixels to formalize our small group’s discussions to have a global perspective.
We worked on 5 separated parts, each one with their own set of characters:
Union (1 - 3)
1) A tutorial with Circle, teaching the player how to move, jump and use the Light power.
2) A second part with Circle and Square, where the player can learn to use Square’s Plateform power to jump on his body.
3) The third part features all three characters climbing a big tree. The player needs to combine all power to succeed, but Triangle becomes corrupted at the end and attacks his comrades, making them fall.
Separation (4 - 5)
4) The corruption of Triangle makes Square and Circle more vulnerable. They have to adapt without him, with more and more darkness to face, needing more reflexion than brutal force to overcome.
5) Square finds the perfect place to ground himself and leaves the group. Circle is alone, and needs to adapt with an increased difficulty by himself. At the end of a very tough level, he’s at the gates of despair when he regains hope as he sees the round moon behind the trees and shine as bright as ever.
The level design follows the emotional valence of the game : as we thrive with the three characters, we go up, but as we loose them and the game’s mood becomes more dark, we go deeper down in the forest through falls and accidental slides.