About

Pandemonium Paradigm was developed during my final game design workshop class. It was a side scrolling adventure game focused on narrative driven dialog and branching level wide puzzles displayed with vibrant hand drawn graphics.

The game had two protagonists that existed in different worlds. As such, the game mechanics changed depending on the character and location.

In the real world the player controls Dawn as she navigates the dangerous streets controlled by deadly enemies. She used her agility and intelligence to overcome obstacles preventing her from reaching her goals. In the virtual world the player controls Pandora, an AI that specializes in cyberwarfare and network infiltration.

Dawn cannot and will not kill enemies. She instead relies on running, jumping, hacking and the use of environmental objects to reach her goals. She will also encounter NPCs who may be unaware of whom she is or otherwise would be willing to assist. If she plays the conversation right she can gain assistance, unlock a puzzles, or get access beyond an obstacle.

Pandora has no use for stealth and instead uses her suite of defensive and offensive
hacking abilities to defeat security software attempting to detect and quarantine her. Each area within the virtual world can have any physical properties its designers would prefer. This means in addition to her basic abilities, she will have access to temporary and context sensitive algorithm that gives her additional powerful abilities. These can range from short-term cyber-narcotics that provide speed and damage boosts or longer term exploits based on the local environment. The cyber-narcotics are shorter-term powers while the exploits are longer term. The exploit will give Pandora a strong natural advantage as she exploits the virtual code that manages the environment. The system will take a while to identify and formulate a patch to plug  the vulnerability, until then Pandora has access to the power, and would be wise to use it to its fullest.

Role

I acted as art director on this project. As such, I handled all visual aspects of the project. I made concept art for all characters, hand drew the opening motion comic, made the background image for the level, and made in-game animations for both of the main characters.

Teammates

Victor Sverdlin, Rafael Mendoza, Cory Rothfeld