Neon Shadows DevLog 1

Hello, World! This post marks the beginning of the development process for Neon Shadows - a couch co-op stealth game dripping with cyberpunk style!

There’s also a video version you can watch here!

The Concept

Neon Shadows asks two players to team up to infiltrate a facility, using their agent’s unique abilities to deal with a variety of enemies, solve puzzles, and assassinate a high value target.

The Team

Programming & Game Design

Giancarlo (GC) - Project Lead & Level Designer
TJ - UI & Character Programmer
Ash - AI Programmer

Art & Animation

Karena - Art Director & Scrum Master
David - Lead Artist
Dalmar - Character Artist
Daniel - Character Artist
Dilu - Character Artist
Ethan - Character Artist
Gyn - Character Artist
Maksym - Character Artist
Mariam - Character Artist
Nathan - Character Artist
Riaz - Character Artist
Sam - Character Artist

The Plan

This project is part of a 12-week university assignment. We’re currently at the end of week 4, and our scheduled release date is December 6th, 2024.

We plan to have an alpha build completed by the end of the next 4-week block, and the remaining 4 weeks will be dedicated to bug fixes, filling in content, and doing the final round of pre-release marketing!

Initial Prototyping

Main Menu

TJ has been hard at work building a gorgeous main menu inspired by Splinter Cell: Conviction, including a frozen backdrop scene, dynamic camera transitions, and a gritty background track!

This is best viewed in the video form of this devlog

Mission Map

The whitebox for our main gameplay level is well underway too! The first mission of the game takes place in a warehouse, and Giancarlo has done an excellent job creating a space with cover locations, interactable doors, destructible objects, and carefully placed lighting that can be disabled via switches.

Player Characters

Players control one of two rival mercenaries, each with their own unique abilities. Navigating through the level without being detected will require co-operative coordination and clever use of each merc’s kit.

The Assassin

The assassin is a melee character that moves quickly and is harder to detect. They are also a skilled hacker, allowing them to unlock doors, disable shields, and more!

The Sniper

The Sniper is a ranged character with the ability to create openings from a distance by taking out guards or shooting sound emitting darts, they are also equipped with a thermal scope that grants them the ability to see targets in low light conditions.

At present we don’t have any finished models or animations for our players, so instead I’ll use this opportunity to talk about the decision making process that led to this pair of character designs!

This is our first experience building a co-op game, and we want to really embrace the couch co-op feel that classics like Army of Two and Splinter Cell Conviction brought to the table. For us, that means creating characters that can’t beat the game individually, but instead need to work together to navigate through the level and complete their mission. This decision alone has implications that reach outside of player ability design into level design and AI behaviours.

Making each of our characters hyperspecialised towards certain gameplay styles allows us to create situations which one player isn’t properly equipped to deal with, driving them to coordinate with their partner to either deal with the situation in unison. This asymmetry also allows us to design enemies that need both players to work together to take down (for instance, by having the assassin hack a shielded enemy, allowing them to be shot by the sniper).

Guard AI

The final piece of the puzzle, guards and their behaviours are crucial to get right for any stealth game.

For Neon Shadows, we plan to implement a two tiered AI system, where individual guards can autonomously carry out their default orders (like patrolling a route, monitoring a hostage, or taking a nap) and notify their commander when things seem off, the commander can then use this information to coordinate teams of guards better.

For Neon Shadows, I (Ash) am planning to implement a two tiered AI system - with an incorporeal commander AI monitoring a team of guards, who will patrol the area until they find something amiss (like a player, or a dead teammate), which they will relay to the commander, allowing more intelligent decision making with regards to selecting which guards to send to investigate, or how many guards can attack the player at a given moment.

My hope is that this will allow for combat to be a little more balanced (it’s not great having the entire base start shooting you at the same time), whilst still being engaging for the players.

What’s Next?

In the next DevLog we should have some proper gameplay footage for you, stay tuned!