Sam Horseman
OUTCLAW WIP
OUTCLAW is my final uni year project where I had the idea of wanting to make a game inspired by Overlord and Pikmin but putting a unique spin on it by allowing the player to play with scale.
​
The project was started in Jan 2024 and plan to be worked on until Q4 2025 provided we can find the funding to get there. So far we have exhibited the game at multiple events, such as: Barclays Game Frenzy, Norwich Game Festival, NUA Gradfest and Gamebridge.
On top of exhibiting at events we were successful in applying to the Tranzfuser programme to work on this game funded for 4 months.
Info
Team Size: 8
My Role: Programmer
Engine: Unreal
Time: 4+ Months
Type: Full Game
Funding: Tranzfuser
​
Exhibitions: Norwich Game Fest
Barclays Game Frenzy
Gamebridge
NUA Gradfest
Scale
As a unique twist in this market I wanted to allow the player to merge with their minions and pull them off their body. This allows for more complex gameplay and allowing the player more options into how they play the game
​
My job here was making a system that changes the players mesh, anims and attacks when they combine to the bigger form which scales based on the amount of minions the player has collected.
AI
The biggest task in this project is the AI. I have fundamentally made a party AI system for the minions the player controls, allowing for control over them by directing them to do tasks, attack enemies or make them follow you.
​
As well as the party AI I have created an enemy AI system with a targeting priority system. This allows for enemies to target minions over the player to make sure the playing experience feels rewarding for using your minions as intended. This also means the AI can fight each other giving the player the choice to get involved or not giving this feel of an empowered being.
Animation
It was also my job to implement the animations the character artist creates. As well as just implementation i was also responsible for adding Giblets head turning and his body tilting when he jumps.
​
I have also learned to communicate with animators explaining what i need and why in terms of animations such as frames and poses needed.
Combat
Outclaw is the first game where I have had to create a combat system. As a rapid prototyper I have created a rough system that lets the player combo attacks.
This system allows other designers to go in and make it feel nicer and change lots of small things such as attack delay, cooldown and combo grace period. Combat also allows the player to attack your own minions as well as the enemies using a robust and expandable system using tags.