Merel van der Wal

To The Core

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ABOUT THE GAME

To The Core is a single-player action platformer with roguelike elements, where you run, jump, and punch your way across desert rooftops, rusty machinery, and smoking robot heads in search of your lost father.

You play as the daughter of a brilliant but absent-minded inventor. When your dad gets captured by a robotic society that evolved in his inter-dimensional rubbish bin, you go after him to save him. Aided by your talkative gauntlet companion, you fight your way through a world built out of your father’s scrap to save your dad, and get home before dinner.

INFORMATION

Platforms:

Engine:

Year:

Team size:

PC

UE4

2017 - 2018

30

RESPONSIBILITIES

AI scripting
Bug fixing
Lead design
Prototyping
Concepting

LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS

Pre-production

This project was a great chance to dive into the pre-production phase. We worked on several prototypes and concepts. It was a bit challenging to reach a shared concept with a larger team of 28 people, but it emphasized the importance of thorough research and how it can benefit the team in later development stages.

Lead

I also had the opportunity to be a lead designer for a short time. It taught me what it means to lead a team and reinforced the idea that a design lead should have vision and be a well-rounded designer. This experience gave me a deeper understanding and an improved ability to support my own project leads in subsequent endeavors.

AI

I delved into AI, learning about behavior trees, setting up basic AI, and troubleshooting AI issues in Unreal Engine.