ZUBERI
Fall 2020
What is the Game?
Zuberi is a single player Metroidvania for PC that heavily focuses on narrative to push the player to explore and unfold the story of our main character, Zuberi, as well as the characters she may meet along her journey.
The intent behind this was to create a player experience that followed a unique narrative while also using a mythos that has never been explored in modern media.
Team Members:
Amy Zebrowski- Lead Producer
Julian Benchimol- Narrative & Level Designer; Product Owner
Cedric Brownewell- Gameplay Designer
Ellie Perez- UI, Sound, & Designer Tool Programmer
Theo Schnorrenberg- Gameplay Programmer
My Role:
As narrative designer, my job was to not only create the story of the world, but also each of the characters that the player would come into contact with. Starting with our main character, Zuberi, as the focus of most of the narrative work. Figuring out her personality was key as she was the main character, and making her motives were clear to the player was of the upmost importance. After Zuberi, I had to make sure she had a strong cast to support her throughout the entire game, and her right hand man, Anubis, helped bring a different point of view for Zuberi. A bit more calm and collected, Anubis was a bit more rational, trying to protect Zuberi from making any major mistakes, while also letting her experience her journey in her own way.
As level designer, I was tasked with constructing the core player experience; taking the assets and tools that our artist and programmers created and implementing them into a working state. Since I was also narrative designer, my ability to work closely with the narrative while designing the levels made it easy for me to outline how the level works and how it coincides with the overarching narrative we’re trying to tell. I carefully constructed the levels in Illustrator before using Unity 2D tile system to accurately recreate them and make any necessary changes.