He's the hippest dude in creation

What's his name?

ANUBIS!

Hey guys!
A little late in the game updating now that the semester is coming to a close. Though that's alright! I still have some nice things to show off. One such item is the most recent RPP! Now this one was fun, though also something that has caused every team a bit more of stress.

Why was that?
Well these games were prototypes for Capstone Pitches. Out of 25 previous pitches, only 11 made it through to the prototyping phase and among those was The Scales of Truth. This game was something that I felt would make an awesome game, given the chance. Of course, it did not make it to the final phase of Capstone it was still fun to make.

Now, what is The Scales of Truth? Well, it is a Action Adventure Platforming game where you play as a 16 year old Anubis - the God of Funerals, Embalming and the Dead. He recently obtained the responsibility of Judging the Souls of the Departed as well as Protecting the magical Scales of Truth. This item is used to judge a person's soul in a room of 40 or so gods to see the fate of the soul within the Afterlife. Of course, such an item isn't needed as the young god is capable of doing the judgement himself.

Though, all of this would probably be easier explained within the game demo below.

The overall concept of this game is to play as this young god, solve platforming puzzles (which would be much more advanced than the prototype we created in the 2 week time). Essentially, inspiration for such a game play was Assassin's Creed Side Quests where Ezio traversed through ancient temples. 

What was probably the unique feature to this game was the Judgement Mechanic. This game was being planned to have three story routes, that are linked to the "morality" of the character. Good, Neutral and Bad routes are linked to the actions of the player. The player would be running into souls that have lost their way in the current chaos in the underworld. Because it is Anubis' duty to lead souls to their proper path, he must locate them and, unfortunately, judge them on the spot after figuring out whether said soul should reach the Valley of Reeds or in Ammit's Stomach. The choices are based off of clues found within the dungeon, or whether or not the player wishes to take a specific route. 

In order to get the good path, the player must make the "right choice." Said choice is often to place the soul in their form of Heaven (Valley of Reeds), though they will have to send the really bad ones to their horrible fate. Going through this route, the player will obtain allies that will provide them with items, weapons, as well as assistance - whether that is within the dungeon or during battle. 

The bad path is if either the player sends all souls to "Hell" or ignore the souls he should be judging (would be either by communicating to the soul and just leaving, or simply automatically judging them on the spot). This prevents the character to obtain/keep allies and will make the game much harder. However, the player will obtain much more magical abilities, usually the more destructive. In this path, it is a higher probability of Anubis joining the villain who had stole the scales.

The neutral path is self explanatory. It is a mixture of both, which leads to a different ending.

This Judgement Mechanic also leads to a different format of "customizing" Anubis and the availability of weapon upgrades.

Essentially, this game was a coming of age story where the player gets to choose the path Anubis takes and what kind of God he will become.


But of course, said game did not make it through the selection process. Some awesome games did, however. Leylines, Child No More, Photography Guru, Sketch Artist, and The Channeler. Though not the same visual theme, Leylines has some awesome game mechanics that should be very fun to work on. This, and so many monsters to design! Yay.


In the future, however, I would like to revisit The Scales of Truth, and see if I can make it much more concrete and perhaps create it as a fun side project. I don't mind learning programming if I have to, to get it made. It' be fun~!