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Mausoleum

Overview

Genre
Platform
Engine
Role
 
Duration
Team size
- Hack 'n Slash
- PS Vita
- Tengine
- Lead designer,
   level designer
- 9 weeks
- 9 people

Check out the dev. blog here âžœ

This was my second project at PlaygroundSquad where we got the task to develop a game for the PS Vita. In Mausoleum you play as Callisto, an adventurer who lost her soul to an evil knight. Fight your way through floors of enemies until you get to the top floor where the knight awaits. Utilise your sword fighting skills and ultimate ability to deal with the three types of enemies that stand in your way. The tower has five floors/rooms with multiple waves in each of them.

3-part attack

The basic attack has a 3-part pattern that exponentially increases the damage and power.

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Player Mechanics

Dash

For a defensive ability, you have the dash to dodge incoming enemy attacks. But dash too much and the character will get tired and unable to dash for a while.

Ultimate ability

By killing enemies, your ultimate bar gets charged with energy. When the bar is full, activate it and unleash that energy on the enemies! Draw on the screen and connect up to sex enemies that you will slash through with enhanced damage. This spends the energy in your bar, correlated to how many enemies you connected.

Enemy Types

Imp

This small melee enemy attacks and walks quite fast but the damage is quite low. They have a medium amount of HP and will be seen a lot throughout the tower.

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Plague Doctor

The doctor is a ranged and stationary enemy. While it can't move, it deals more damage than the imp and it can shoot over the low walls in room! Though low HP will make it an easy target when you finally get to it.

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Gargoyle

Big and slow but deals the most damage. The gargoyle is a melee enemy that still has a long range with its big club. In fact, its club is so big that it too reaches over low walls! With the most HP out of the three, it takes a while to kill.

My work

I wrote this concept with the PS Vita in mind. Because it was a console no one in my team knew much about, I decided to keep it simple so we had time to explore its limits and power. The concept focuses on how the player can handle different mixes of enemies and high/low walls. I wanted each room to utilise the characteristics of the different enemies and make a level that is easiest beatable with a certain strategy.

 

As early as possible we tried to settle for a good size for the rooms. Once we did, I borrowed a mock-up scene from the artists with the right scale and size and started placing out walls and spawn points. Each room has three waves except for the final boss level that has five. These waves are in the same scene but put in groups so I could easily hide them when working on another wave. The waves in each room only changes only where the enemies spawn. The walls and breakables stays the same throughout the rooms waves.

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Something that was challenging was to make a good level layout while also trying to make it match the theme of the room. 

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  1. Mausoleum

  2. Library

  3. Church

  4. Ball room

  5. Throne room

Credits

Art

Amanda Stevens

Felicia Nettervik

Linus Hed Tegelbratt

Petter Boson

Design

Samuel Einheri

Sara Karlsson

Programming

Johan Rosén

Julianne Olaussen

Liam Johansson

Sound

Noah Johnson

Isak Olars

Music

Gabriel Nilsson

Tim Larsson

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