The Hermit
Designer, Developer
The Hermit is a 3D adventure game in which the player takes on the role of Herm, a lonely little hermit crab looking for a new home in the big, big ocean. The game begins in a lonely little tide pool but as Herm comes out of his shell and explores new territories, he will find new shells with new abilities.
The Hermit was made as part of a 15-week production course at USC.
Made in Unity.
Play it here! 🎮
Project Details
- Duration: September 2023 - December 2023
- Genre: 3D Adventure
- Platform: PC
- Game Engine: Unity
- My Role(s): Designer, Developer, Art Lead
- Team Size: 3
Contributions
- Developed the art direction for the game.
- Built the Kelp Forest and Cave level in Unity with a focus on the emotional quality of the spaces.
- Ran external playtests twice a week for 6 weeks and collected playtest feedback from players to iterate on the levels and player control.
- Collected playtest feedback and organized it into spreadsheets to review with my collaborator and decide what the next iteration step is.
- 3D Modelled assets in Maya and used Blender’s Geometry Nodes to procedurally generate assets.
- Developed the dynamic fog system in Unity using C#.
- Wrote and maintained project documentation including the Game Design Macro, Audio Design Document, Project Goals and Development Blog.
Design
Where did we start when developing The Hermit? My collaborator and I are both very inspired by Journey and the work of Jenova Chen. We started with prototyping emotional experiences about connection with others, and how we both express and feel our emotions.
After 3 weeks of prototyping, we found playtesters really liked the character in one of our third prototypes, a hermit crab. We adopted him as our player character, and named him Herm!
Charming Character and Game Mechanic
People loved our hermit crab player character from the start, so we built the game around making the mechanic charming, as well as the player character lovable!
We used real-world behaviors of hermit crabs as well to help us drive our design. Hermit crabs often will use random objects as their shells, so we began building our shell swapping mechanic. Playtesters across all of our playtests throughout the entirety of development reported that they felt a really enjoyable moment of discovery when swapping the first shell,
Visually Stunning Environment
We knew early that we wanted a visually pleasant environment. We wanted to build a space that inspires curiosity and awe in players, despite being so small. We did a lot of shader work to achieve the visual style that we wanted. We used FlatKit and MK Toon shaders as base, but also modified the source code of several shaders to achieve the look that we want.
We knew early that we wanted a visually pleasant environment. We wanted to build a space that inspires curiosity and awe in players, despite being so small. We did a lot of shader work to achieve the visual style that we wanted. We used FlatKit and MK Toon shaders as base, but also modified the source code of several shaders to achieve the look that we want.
Underwater Feeling
Another challenge we faced was making the game feel underwater. Early playtesters reported that they didn’t think they were underwater. The visuals and audio design made them feel as if they were on land.
Looking at pictures of underwater footage, we could see that objects in the distance become a more deep blue-ish tint. We achieved this with post processing and fog! We also used a water shader to animate the surface water, and placed it somewhat low so that the player can see that there is water above their heads.
In addition to visuals, we achieved an underwater feeling with audio. Our Berklee collaborator created a set of underwater ambient noises and bubble pops to make it sound as if the player is underwater, as opposed to being near a body of water, By the end of our game, players reported on surveys that they both felt and enjoyed the underwater experience.
Another challenge we faced was making the game feel underwater. Early playtesters reported that they didn’t think they were underwater. The visuals and audio design made them feel as if they were on land.
Looking at pictures of underwater footage, we could see that objects in the distance become a more deep blue-ish tint. We achieved this with post processing and fog! We also used a water shader to animate the surface water, and placed it somewhat low so that the player can see that there is water above their heads.
In addition to visuals, we achieved an underwater feeling with audio. Our Berklee collaborator created a set of underwater ambient noises and bubble pops to make it sound as if the player is underwater, as opposed to being near a body of water, By the end of our game, players reported on surveys that they both felt and enjoyed the underwater experience.
Level Design
Our game was super hard to design for, and had a lot of level design challenges because of our character, controls and camera!
For example: Getting a player to go around an object is actually super hard in our game! We took it for granted that players will naturally be able to navigate around objects! Herm is so tiny that going around an object is actually a big task and players can get disoriented really easily. For example, going around a wide rock column takes many seconds and is not instant. It's not really like many other third person games where the camera is more zoomed out and going around an object as a bigger player character only takes 1 second. We iterated aggressively on removing and adjusting the positions of very large objects.
We even have written our level design bible for the game!
Our game was super hard to design for, and had a lot of level design challenges because of our character, controls and camera!
For example: Getting a player to go around an object is actually super hard in our game! We took it for granted that players will naturally be able to navigate around objects! Herm is so tiny that going around an object is actually a big task and players can get disoriented really easily. For example, going around a wide rock column takes many seconds and is not instant. It's not really like many other third person games where the camera is more zoomed out and going around an object as a bigger player character only takes 1 second. We iterated aggressively on removing and adjusting the positions of very large objects.
We even have written our level design bible for the game!
