Shepherd
A shepherd is tasked to move a sheep herd to market to provide for their village; but to do so, they must cross a formidable desert while keeping the herd together and ensuring the sheeps' survival.
Shepherd takes place in a fictional desert in a world not unlike Earth where the player leads their sheep through valleys, gorges, and sweeping desert landscapes. The player must keep moving forward to find new food and water sources to keep up the sheeps' health and stamina. The player can find shelters throughout the environment to give their sheep a rest and to bond with the herd. Meanwhile, a starving and desperate coyote stalks the player and the sheep throughout the journey, attacking opportunistically. In addition, the player can find various interesting landmarks throughout the map that allude to the world's dark and destructive past.
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The player character, an entity simply named Shepherd, is a youngster of their village and must set out on their first shepherding journey. It is a tradition in their village that young shepherds take a small herd of sheep to a far away city so that the sheep can be sold. Shepherd must make the journey to the city to sell the sheep, however, as each sheep is an individual and begins to show their character, this task will prove more and more emotionally trying.
Pitching & Initial Design
My role in "Shepherd" is composed of a few titles, because of the small team size, but it would generally fall under the title "Creative Director." I pitched the game initially by myself in a much more undeveloped state and gradually gained more and more teammates. However, my current roles are Game Designer, Narrative Designer, and Vision Holder.
With my team, I pitched Shepherd to a group of professionals in the industry and went through a question and answer session as well as handled feedback and revised the game's design accordingly.
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Moreover, in the early design stages, it was important to me and the team that everyone got a say in the large, overarching design of the game no matter someone's role. The game's design went through the polishing phase of design briefs, revisions, finding alternatives, testing, and working through design disagreements as a team.
Slide from pitch deck
The biggest concern for our game's player experience is how the player will react and feel about the sheep. Our goal is to have the player adore the sheep, notice their individual traits, and assign personalities to them.
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This connection is formed by the player taking care of the sheep. The player will find food and water for them as well as camp so that the herd can rest. The player will also defend the sheep against a coyote that can hurt or kill them.
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With this connection formed, our game's narrative will become more effective.
Part of a spreadsheet for Shepherd's hunger mechanic
In addition to writing the game's world, designing the game's mechanics, and more, I also designed a small play space for the purposes of playtesting that captured the visual appeal of Shepherd in Unity.
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I planned for the area to include all of the core mechanics of our game as well. While designing, I considered what the player will be looking for first. I assumed that would be food and water. In addition, I limited the player's view of the large canyon by building up rock structures that they could explore.
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In the very center of the map, I placed an oversized skeleton. It's unclear what the huge beast is because it is partially sunken into the sand, but with this, I hoped to get the player's mind wondering about what sort of place they are exploring and how the skeleton got there in the first place.
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In addition, I felt that the skeleton would do well as a camping location for the player to rest for the evening and relax with their sheep while allowing for some interesting lighting to bounce off the bones.
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I also set the fog for the game in addition to making the lighting suit a desert environment. I tried to make the lighting and environment more red/orange while making the shadows and dark areas purple/blue.
Level Design
Design Pivot
Toward the end of our prototyping phase, our team began to realize that we needed smaller mechanics that could be created quickly and that capitalized more on the connection the player has with the sheep.
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The coyote was taking quite a long time to develop and make functional, so we pivoted slightly. We turned out attention to small obstacles in the environment that would interact with the sheep. We felt that this would make the game more engaging for the player and it would move along out game's development more.
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And so, our game's tone became a little more humorous and whimsical, but we felt that this change made sense for our game. We designed obstacles like the following: brambles to ensnare the sheep, cactus fruit to distract them, and an eagle to scatter them.