Nocturne
MAY 2026 //Nocturne: Escape the Night is a story-driven RPG where you must face your own self through unique grid-based combat inspired by Megaman: Battle Network and One Step From Eden.
ABOUT THE GAME //Nocturne was the capstone project for the University of Utah division of games program with a team of about 15 students. It is a single-player game where you explore the story by battling enemies through a unique grid-based combat system.
Credits:
Producers: Leah, Li
Lead Programmer: Jamal
Programmers: Shrey, Emma, Bradley
Game Designer: Rulon Adams
Narrative Designer: Kyler
Lead Artist: Jazmyn
Artists: Sasha, David, Erin, Stephen, Joseph, Noah
GAME DESIGN //In the initial phases of our game creation, as we were deciding how our game would work, I came up with and pitched a game mainly inspired by Megaman: Battle Network, with One Step From Eden inspirations added later on.
I had a pretty clear vision in mind for how the player would avoid attacks and how the enemy would attack, which mostly stayed the same throughout the development process. The player’s attack method was what required more fine tuning and went through some changes as we developed.
The overall design was a great lesson in working with a team to create and refine unique game mechanics. While I had the initial idea, I tried to be very open to change and incorporate people’s ideas and let go of my own if they were not working.
COMBAT DESIGN //The majority of my time on the project was spent on the combat design. This included creating the enemies, placing them throughout the scene(s), and tuning their moves, damage, etc.
This process, especially the beginning stages, required lots of collaboration with the programmers to create a combat system that worked for both of us, and allowed us to create unique enemies. Throughout the first semester, I would work on an enemy, realize what our system needed, and work with programmers to incorporate necessary features.
Throughout the second semester (and partly the first), I used our in-class and out-of-class playtests to get valuable feedback about my enemy designs and refine them to level of difficulty I thought was reasonable. As I learned throughout this project, what makes a game hard or easy is affected by a wide variety of factors, some that you might not initially think about. For example, Nocturne was at one time at a point where it was far too difficult, and that was in part due to our lack of a good tutorial, so players did not understand how to play the game properly.
Throughout my experience I learned how to make interesting mechanics and enemies, playtest those mechanics, identify the problems they have, and refine them to fix those problems. I also grew to love the process; It is such a collaborative process, getting as many different perspectives as possible, and trying to refine your game in a way that better fits your design goals as a result.
