Ninja Punk

Ninja Punk is a fast-paced stealth game with an emphasis on mobility and speed. Players take control of a cybernetic ninja who’s hellbent on taking down a large evil corporation in a near-future. Players must get through levels using their ninja mobility and stealth to complete objectives and assassinate targets.

On this team, I designed and scripted all of the AI and implemented the takedown system using Unreal Blueprints and Behavior trees.

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Ninja Punk

My Role

Combat/Stealth Designer and Enemy Scripter

Game Info

My role for this project was to design obstacles for the player to overcome and meaningful ways to interact with those obstacles. That meant designing and scripting our enemies and our stealth and takedown system. I also was in charge of tracking our team's progress over Jira and Confluence.

Third-Person, Stealth Action

Singleplayer

Released: March 2, 2024

Enemy Design

Guards have several states that change depending on the players actions. Guards can patrol, investigate noises, search for the player, or attack them based on their current active state. Makes the guards feel like actual people instead of NPCs with simple goals.

The player can be in many different situations due to the genre of the game and their powerful movement so creating reliable and consistent AI was important for our game. I decided that 3 major states were needed to create the foundation for all of a guard's behaviors.

Patrol/Passive

Guards patrol along a path set in the editor by default. If they are given no path, they will wait in that position until detecting the player or investigating. If a player escapes guards, they will investigate briefly then return to their passive state.

Investigation

When hearing a noise or filling their detection meter to 50%, guards will investigate. Based on the stimuli, they will either look at the last location they spotted the player or the source of the noise. Guards will then search in a small area after the initial location and return to patrolling. Investigation has a substate called "distraction," which functions identically but does not have the smaller searches after. Used for noises or if the player was only briefly seen.

Combat

When a guard's detection meter is filled or the guard is called by another guard, the NPC will enter its combat state. Melee enemies will beeline for the player to get into melee range and take a swing. Ranged enemies will look for a position with line of sight to the player and then shoot at them. Both guards also have a state for when a player has escaped line of sight but has not exited combat called "chasing." Melee guards have a short cooldown for attacking to avoid the player being overwhelmed and ranged guards can only shoot 3 times before reloading.

Takedowns

Takedowns are the primary way of interacting with guards. Making takedowns satisfying and fun to perform was key to making the game enjoyable. Players are able to perform takedowns both on the ground and in the air. Takedowns also had to complement the movement system of the player. They either had to be fast or stylish enough to keep up with the game's quick pace.

Air Takedown

Back Takedown

Front Takedown

Each guard has 3 volumes that the player must be in to perform a takedown. The guards check if the player is both facing the guard and the is not performing an action that prevents them from doing a takedown. If both conditions are met then the player may perform a takedown.

Air takedowns have extra checks that must be met when the player enters the volume. The guards check that both the player is high enough to perform one and that there is nothing in the way.

When all conditions are met, the player will teleport to a location in front or behind the guard depending on the side the takedown was executed from and the animation being played.

Ample amount of feedback are given to each animation to make killing guards as fun as possible. As this is the main way players interact with guards, making them satisfying was high priority for the team. Sound effects, particles, and physics were added to each animation to make killing guards fun and satisfying.

Design Goals

Goal 1 - Simple and Readable

The first and biggest goal for the enemies was to make them understandable to anyone who played the game. I did this by making sure that all enemies performed in clear and consistent ways. I made sure to give each state the enemies could be in their own animations and ways to telegraph to the player what they're doing.

Goal 2 - Stylish and Stealthy

We also wanted to make sure that players were able to experience the fantasy of playing as a cybernetic ninja. Making takedowns and movement feel good were major parts of the design.

Goal 3 - Choice for Execution

We wanted to make sure that every scenario or encounter in the game has multiple ways to approach it. Players should have the freedom and choice to tackle encounters however they see fit. Part of feeling like a stealth ninja is figuring out the best way to get to a target.

Process

Building Off of a Reference
- We used other games as a reference to begin building the foundations of our game. We looked at other games in the stealth genre and tried to determine what worked the best in those games. By boiling down the core concepts of other games, we were able to find out what works in the stealth genre and what works best for our kind of game. We settled on freedom through movement and empowering the player as pillars we thought were key to the stealth genre.
Finding the Fun
- We did a lot of experimenting through playtesting to solidify our core gameplay loop. We ultimately went with the philosophy of building off of what the team and the playtesters found to be the most fun parts of our game. This ended up being our movement and takedown systems so we did our best, in the time given, to make those two systems as fun and satisfying as possible.