Croak and Dagger
August 2022 - May 2023
Narrative Designer & Level Designer
Developer Info
Role: Narrative Designer & Level Designer
Tools Used: Unity, GitHub, Trello, Yarn Spinner
Team Size: 15 – 20
Duration: 10 Months
Game Info
Genre: Narrative Hack and Slash
Platform: Itch.io
Project Status: Released May 21st, 2023
Game Description: Croak And Dagger is a narrative hack and slash game about a frog traveling to save his kids with a baby frog that can turn into weapons!
Contributions
- Wrote, story-boarded, and implemented the narrative and dialogue systems in the game using Yarn Spinner.
- Designed and iterated upon the tutorial level adding key features in player progression.
- Added dynamic button prompts to help players learn how the game’s controls work.
What I Learned
- Yarn Spinner is a really powerful tool that I plan to use in more of my projects moving forward
- Designing levels may take multiple iterations in order to get right.
Pre-Production
Brainstorming
Our team during our time spent about three weeks in the pre-production stage trying to come up with an idea that our team was excited about to work on. Two of the biggest ideas we had was one that involved an Amphibian Hack and Slash and another that involved a Living Weapon.
We eventually came to the decision to combine the two ideas making it so that the main character was a frog with frog-like powers and giving them a living weapon that would change states based off the frog life cycle.
Narrative Design
The main story of Croak and Dagger would be that Dagger loses his kids after an evil heron destroys his house and captures them. After Croak leaves, he finds a embryo of a frog that has the ability to turn into a weapon.
Once they have met, the two are attacked by an ambush. After the fight, they are more formally introduced to each other and travel together on a journey to save Dagger’s children from the heron.
Depending on the player’s actions towards Croak would determine what type of weapon Croak would evolve into as the story progresses.
Level Design
Tutorial Narrative & Level Design
Since the game we wanted to make was going to be very narrative driven I decided to storyboard a narrative to the game that would not only be engaging to the player but also teach the player the main mechanics of the game.
I did this by creating a storyboard that outlined the entirety of what the player should experience during the tutorial level. Allowing our entire team to reference it on what tasks needed to be done and allowed for work to start on translating it to an actual level.
Pre-Cave Level Design
The Pre-Cave level is suppose to help the player get used to the Croak weapon mechanic and prepare them for the boss in the cave level.
Fireflies are placed throughout the level to act as an extra side-quest for the player as well as another chance for the player to increase their relationship with Croak.
Cave Level Design
This level would act as the final stage before the Croak evolved into his next weapon state. The player would have to ease Croak’s arachnophobia in order to progress with the final boss being a giant spider.
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- Croak and Dagger Storyboard
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- Croak and Dagger Tutorial Level Design
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- Croak and Dagger Pre-Cave Level Design
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- Croak and Dagger Cave Level Design
Narrative System Design
Player Parenting Score
One of the main systems I designed was how player dialogue choices would affect Croak’s evolution throughout the game. My decision was to format the choices and score off of how well the player did as a parent to Croak rather than a simple good or bad dialogue option.
This would be done to try and obscure the nature of the dialogue choices so that players did not feel inclined to pick certain decisions. This also would allow for more intriguing dialogue as we try to see what the player values more, their mission or their relationship with Croak.
The main way good parenting and bad parenting would affect Croak as a weapon would be that a more harsh parenting style would make Croak take on a more lethal look and design to reflect his need for Dagger’s validation.
However for good parenting styles Croak would take on the style of more blunt and defensive weapons in order to focus more on defending Dagger rather than trying to please him.
