Huiyong "Peter" Lim
Narrative & Game Designer
Click the image to install Slime Guy at Steam
​Slime Guy is a 2D roguelite dungeon-crawler in which players play as Puddles, a slime who seems to be weak but has amazing slime abilities.
My roles at Slime Guy are game designer and narrative designer. My duties include:
- Writing the narrative scripts
- Designing the enemies, concepts for stages, and slime abilities
- Playtesting the game to find and report bugs to programmers
- Cooperating with artists, sound designers, and programmers to enhance gameplay
<Slime Guy Official Trailer>
<Primary Ability - Shotgun Slime Pellet>
<Secondary Ability - Slime Whip>
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Gremlin>
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Advanced Gremlin>
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Gremlin Design Document>
I imagined the dwarves digging for minerals in the canyon. With this concept on my mind, I started writing the design document of 1st enemy: gremlin.
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Since the gremlin would be one of the basic enemies, I designed it as melee enemy and moves around in groups. They approach the player at high speed and strikes the player with a weapon on their hands.
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The document focuses on the following:
- Type
- Behavior
- Agro
- Types of Attack
- Stats
<Slime Abilities Design Process>
First, I designed the main mechanism (slime abilities) of the game, making sure the abilities are slimey.
<Miro Screenshots>
Miro Board - Slime Abilities​
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Using Miro, I illustrated the concept of the abilities.
I designed abilities under 4 categories:
- Melee
- Ranged
- Summon
- Trail​​
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Why 4 categories?
- To make use of slime's characteristics: stretching, reducing, self-healing, and leaving traces​​
- To describe all these characteristics, 4 categories were perfect match!​
<Final Results>
Due to lack of development personnel and time, some skills have changed or disappeared. Below is a list of final skills.
<What I Learned>
SCOPE!!
- Being creative isn't enough
- What I want it to be done vs What actually can be done
- Think about how programmers would make them before designing​
<Explore, Fight & Collect>
<Buy Ability>
<Buy Relic>
<Gameplay Loop>
- Explore different room
- Fight enemies
- Collect currency and use them to buy either relics or abilities from shops located at the dungeon
Then repeat them.
<I-Valley Initial Design>
- Purpose: Maximize the uncertainty and improvisation of roguelite through random 'variable' of natural disasters (thunder, fire storm, earthquake, mist)
<Scope Adjustment>
- Problem: Due to development time and resource constraints, implementation of all variable raised concerns about overall quality degradation
- Solution: Decided to boldly deleting "variables" and focus on "combat"
- Result: Eliminate variables and complete the stage with "tactical spatial design" utilizing monster placement
<Final Result>
- Combat: Converted to a battlefield where players can test their own build (skills/item synergy) without being disturbed by the weather effects
- Game learning: Plays a role in advancing gameplay while increasing operational proficiency before difficulty increases
<Initial I-Valley Design Document>
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Gremlin>
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Advanced Gremlin>
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Gremlin Summary>
- Role: Continuously approach and restrict player movement
- Design intention: Simple attack pattern to induce proficiency in player movement
- Combat contribution: Enclose players through numerous deployments, causing player avoidance
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Advanced Gremlin Summary>
- Role: Threaten players with a ranged linear attacks
- Design intention: Causes players to make a quick judgment
- Combat contribution: Limits players' movement through the ranged attack
<Slime Guy 1st Enemy - Gremlin Design Document>
The document focuses on the following:
- Type
- Behavior
- Agro
- Types of Attack
- Stats
Why Gremlins?
- Natural for creatures like gremlins appear and move around as a group at the valley
- Slime Guy takes its place in a high-fantasy world! Gremlins often appear in a place like this.
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What Gremlins can do:
- Appear individually or in a group & attack the player
- Close attack
What Advanced Gremlins can do:
- Appear individually or in a group & attack the player
- Ranged attack
Why 2 different versions of same monsters?
- Create combat rhythm
- Induces player movement with close attack from Gremlins and requires players to make immediate judgments (avoidance or combat) with ranged attack from Advanced Gremlins
<Slime Guy 2nd Enemy - Wizard>
<Slime Guy 2nd Enemy - Wizard Summary>
- Role: Interferes players' attack rhythm with teleport and 3-way attack
- Design intention: Simple attack pattern to induce proficiency in player movement
- Combat contribution: Creates an environment of players continue to move without staying at a same place with Advanced Gremlin
<Slime Guy 2nd Enemy - Wizard Design Document>
The document focuses on the following:
- Type
- Behavior
- Agro
- Types of Attack
- Stats
Why Wizards?
- Main core: Teleport
- When players move near the wizard and attack, teleport to another place to disrupt the battle pattern
- Ignore the wizard -> keep getting ranged attack
- Get close to the wizard -> Teleport somewhere else to break the battle pattern
Why Wizards When There is Already Advanced Gremlin?
- To adjust difficulty level
- Advanced Gremlin's ranged attack is made in a straight line -> Easy to dodge, especially in the roguelite genre, which has the characteristic of players getting used to patterns as they die
- Wizard's ranged attack is made in three-way
- Wizard's attack aims for players' blind spots through teleports and three-way attacks.
- Having both Advanced Gremlin and Wizard requires players to have a high level of avoidance skills and priorities
What Wizards can do:
- Teleport for moving
- Teleport to somewhere else once the player gets too close with them
- Ranged attack
<Cancelled Slime Guy Enemy - Spirit of Fire Design Document>
The document focuses on the following:
- Type
- Behavior
- Agro
- Types of Attack
- Stats
What Spirit of Fire got cancelled:
- Clever idea, but shortage of artists
- There was only 1 artist in the team when the concept design for Spirit of Fire was done.
What Spirit of Fire can do:
- Charges toward the player to stun them
- Summon obstacles from the floor to attack the player
<Slime Guy 3rd Enemy - Golem>
<Slime Guy 3rd Enemy - Golem Summary>
- Role: Strongly teaches player's silly movement, including dodging the monsters' attack
- Design intention: To develop psychological warfare inducing players to maintain distance and avoid timing with low mobility but overwhelming attacks
- Combat contribution: Limits players moving routes and balance battle in chaotic combat​
<Slime Guy 3rd Enemy - Goelm Design Document>
The document focuses on the following:
- Type
- Behavior
- Agro
- Types of Attack
- Stats
Why Golems?
- A monster that moves slowly but has a powerful shot
- Easy to avoid, but gives fatal damage if you get hit even once -> Gives tension
- While dealing with fast-moving monsters, such as Gremlins and Wizards, players will constantly check the their position so they don't go to the space where the golem is.
Synergy with other monsters
- Designed for players to prioritize of attacking monsters using their space and abilities
- Gremlins' close ranged attack
- Advanced Gremlins' ranged attack in a straight line
- Wizards' teleport and a three way attack
What Golem can do:
- Moves slowly
- But gives massive damage to the player
<Slime Guy 4th Enemy - Vine Creature>
<Slime Guy 4th Enemy - Vine Creature Summary>
- Role: Continually generates objectiles and fires them, and erases the player's safe zone
- Design intention: Focusing on visual production (seeds, vines) so players can compete with real-time generated terrain (seeds) & deal with the threat (vines) happening after the monster's death so the tension of the battle can be kept
- Combat Contribution: Limits the players' movements and increases the tension of the battle
<I-Valley 4th Enemy Candidate Design>
The document focuses on the following:
- Name
- Size
- Type
- Apperance
- How Do They Move
- Attacks
- Stats
- Strategy to Take Down
Why Vine Creature?
- Make players feel various combat experiences
- Others monsters disappear completely after their death; however, vines are generated after Vine Creature dies -> Vines can give damage players -> Can't let go of the tension even after the battle is over.
What Vine Creature can do:
- Summons the vine from the floor to attack the player
- Shoots an energy ball to the player
- Makes thorny vines after its death, which can damage the player
With this, the four enemies for Slime Guy were decided:
- Gremlin
- Wizard
- Golem
- Vine Creature
<Slime Guy 4th Enemy Other Candidate Design>
<Slime Guy Boss Design Summary>
- Role: The final boss to close the narrative and an all-rounder driving the players to their limit through different phases
- Design intention
- Design the pressure to match the story of kidnapping the player's family and friends & the destruction of the village &
- The same skills are intended to be invoked faster in Phase 2 so that the player can respond more accurately to the boss skills acquired in Phase 1.
- Combat Contribution: Players learn through the phases and later a variable called 'speed' is added to to switch the combat from 'the final boss battle' to 'limit-breaking battle'
<Slime Guy Boss Design Document>
Why Nymph?
- Not weird for nymph to appear!
- A character with a nice and gentle image appeared as a boss
The document explains the following:
- The attack patterns of the final boss
<Slime Guy - Slime Village Summary>
- Role: A checkpoint for pre-combat maintenance and a system for checking the players' performance
- Design intention:
- After defeating the final boss, the village gradually returns to its original state, presenting the goal of rebuilding the village and finding family back to the player
- Through Relic encyclopedia, players can view information about relics and develop strategies by learning the information
- Combat Contribution:
- Select skills before entering the battle & contribute to the player to have the upper hand in the battle
- Helps players master games by obtaining relocation information through the relic encyclopedia, understanding the efficiency of the items, and developing strategies tailored to them
<Slime Guy - Slime Village Concept Design Document>
<Slime Guy - Slime Village Script Summary>
Narrative Intention
- Presenting guidelines: Wrote in a screenplay format to clearly communicate visual and auditory directing elements such as character line tone, camera angle, and sound to the team
- Motivating players: Encourage players be hostile to the de facto power that took the village and their families
Design Intention
- Describing the worldview of the game: Designed to help the players understand the world view of the game with just a prologue
- Motivation: Make players think about who did this and why, and motivate them to play games
Combat Contribution
- The prologue not only learns how to play the game through the first battle, that is, how to operate it, but also allows you to experience the combat system as a battle for survival, not as a practice
- It shows that the monsters in the prologue are related to the forces behind them, allowing players to justify their actions
<Slime Guy - Slime Village Script>
<Silme Village Script Justification>
- Destroy the village and kidnap the player's family so they can fight the monsters
- Display the quest window to transit from cinematic scene to gameplay scene
<Silme Village Script Gameplay and Interaction>
- Make possible interactions between players and NPCs & objects
<Silme Village Script Predicting & Responding to Player Behavior>
Narrative Intent
- Describe possible scenarios and provide a guide to address unexpected situations that could happen in the gameplay for the development phase
Design Intent
- In-game events are generated according to the player's behavior, being responded by a system
Wrote barks...
- to prevent each and every action that players would do
- to prevent players to destroy the game system​
<Slime Guy - First Encounter with the Boss: Iresine>
