OVERVIEW
THORB is a Doom-like arena shooter that was developed over the course of a few months by a team of colleagues from Naughty Dog. Narratively, the game follows a sentient orb and its unwitting human accomplice as they seek to escape a space station overrun by The Eyes of Id—a legion of floating, disembodied eyes bent on seizing the orb and wielding its power.
Role:
Narrative and Game Designer
Team Size:
14
Tools:
Unreal Engine 4, Blueprints
Platform:
PC
Year:
2022
RESPONSIBILITIES
Narrative Design:
Devised and wrote all narrative content
Created dialogue system to support scripted dialogue lines and integration with orb companion’s colors and animations
Implemented all dialogue throughout game’s eight levels/combat spaces
Game Design:
Co-designed and scripted bullet-hell minigame with a focus on boss behavior, bullet types, and performance optimization
Designed the minigame’s six levels, prioritizing difficulty progression and the introduction of new enemy behaviors
NARRATIVE
Dialogue System:
The overarching goal for narrative in Thorb was to provide context and motivation for the player as the progressed through the game’s different levels. More mechanically, narrative was meant to fill the empty space during time outside of combat — in particular, as the character moved through the two large Exterior spaces. For the game’s dialogue system, I set out to make something that served those narrative needs while tailoring it to the world. Given the game only had one speaking character, I was able to make the system more personalized, dynamically changing the color of subtitle text to match the current color of The Orb and synchronizing the typing effect with The Orb’s blinking to give the impression it’s “talking.”
Story:
The story in this game and underlying method of narrative delivery took great inspiration from classic The Legend of Zelda titles, where the silent protagonist is joined by a chatty companion who serves as the primary vehicle for exposition and worldbuilding. With this game, we went in a direction where your companion simultaneously served as your weapon (à la Skyward Sword), which opened up unique dialogue opportunities and provided a basis for the somewhat adversarial relationship between the protagonist and titular Orb.
MINIGAME
Overall Design:
In designing the minigame, I worked with another designer on our team, who set up the overall framework while I focused on boss behaviors, bullet types, and implementing and balancing the six levels. For the minigame as a whole, much like the main game, the goal was to keep the player moving as they monitored their ammo/charge and carefully chose when to return fire. Given the player would be repeatedly engaging with the minigame as they cleared combat spaces, I wanted to avoid it becoming stale or feeling like a chore. To ensure this, I designed additional boss behaviors and bullet types (discussed in greater detail below) and steadily increased the number of bullets and complexity of fire patterns as the player progressed. To keep the minigame performant, I set up an object pooling system that prevented any runaway bullets for both the boss and player character.
Boss Behaviors and Bullet Types:
In designing the different bullets and boss behaviors, I wanted the player to have to rethink their strategy for each level as they contended with new additions. For the boss, this resulted in the “spinning” and “orbiting” behaviors, the speed and extent of which could be controlled in the data asset for the particular phase or subphase. On the bullet type side, in addition to the standard red bullets, I created destructible yellow bullets to block the player’s own projectiles, and homing purple bullets to further encourage player movement and reward reaction speed.
Description:
