Daniel Ibironke | Unreal Engine Games Designer
Terminal Recall
Software Used (By Me): Unreal 5, GitHub, Microsoft Word, Piskel, Photoshop
Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Itch.io Link
Trailer
Gameplay: Terminal Recall is a turn-based strategy game with chess-inspired combat, where you play as a mouse engineer fending off enemies on a deserted wasteland planet, gathering pieces for a mecha to escape and regroup with your crew. Each piece gives a distinct ability with a move and attack mode, each one tied to a different chess piece. This was developed over two months, as part of the Junior/Senior Collaborative Game Development module. My primary role was as a designer, although I also assisted with UI design to some extent. In completing this project, I gained more experience using GitHub (branch management, rebasing), documentation of level design diagrams, and some Blueprint when adding functionality to UI widgets.
My contributions:
Terminal Recall’s core gameplay loop consists of two phases. One of these is the overworld, where the player can pick which encounter to attempt. I contributed by drawing up how the pathways would branch. The other phase is the grid-based encounters, using both enemies and interactables (traps to avoid). Piskel was used for both, although in hindsight it made more sense to use it for the overworld as it is not grid based. In fact, the finalized design for the overworld was implemented by the other level designer.
I made 8 of the 11 encounters that made the final cut, including a tutorial which was designed to be purposefully simple. I kept in close communication with the Producer to ensure my level design stayed align with the project’s vision (for instance, making encounters that were either 10 tiles by 10 or 15 by 15 as the idea sizes.)
For the UI, my initial contribution was creating some placeholder assets in Photoshop (specifically icons representing the abilities) which were replaced later in development. This ultimately turned into me adding functionality into other UI widgets: the encounter UI (changing between move and attack modes with the space bar while selecting abilities with the QWERT keys), and the player’s overworld health bar.
Reflection:
The project was mostly a success as it delivered a solid gameplay loop that is visually great, however scope creep did limit what planned mechanics were able to be finished before the deadline. Two of three enemy types were supposed to inflict statuses on the player (the Scorpion type would use poison, and the Fox type would apply intimidation which would halve the damage the player deals by half). Another issue lies within the ideation phase: a combat-puzzle hybrid was considered at first until the puzzle element was scrapped entirely, a choice that in hindsight should have been made sooner as it would have given the game more focus.
