June 2022 – Desktop Web Browser – Unity WebGL

Role: Designer/Developer/Producer
Team size: 1 full-time (me), 5 part-time
Development Time: 3.5 weeks

Play it on itch.io

Paws of Purity is a platforming game created as a side project and entry for the Metroidvania Month 16 game jam. The game finished in 3rd overall out of a field of 75 entries, earning 4 out of 5 stars in each of the four judging criteria: enjoyment, design, presentation, and the presence of metroidvania elements.

The Concept

I went into the jam with the idea of mixing cats, yōkai-inspired spirits, and a Studio Ghibli vibe into the jam’s requested “metroidvania”-style game. I used that premise to snag some artists from the indie/hobbyist community and started working with them to lay out a plan. We had no idea what the mechanics would be other than we wanted the player’s avatar to be a cat and we figured there’d be jumping.

Brainstorming the Main Mechanics

I developed the mechanics by first having the team do a couple rounds of brainstorms. The first round was essentially a free-association with our four premise topics—cats, spirits, metroidvania, and Studio Ghibli—and coming up with formal and dramatic gameplay elements around them. We were working virtually and across wildly different timezones (from the Philippines to the US), so I let the team brainstorm asynchronously, giving everyone a 24-hour window to add their ideas to a Discord channel and have discussion along the way.

For the second round of brainstorming I had us all go over the list of ideas and filter them by what we were interested in making, what we felt we had the skill to make, and what we thought we had the time to make. At this point I encouraged the team to raise any issues with ideas while also noting the ideas they liked the most. Following the voting and filtering, I sat down to work out a cohesive set of elements from the favorites and create a design plan to begin building prototypes from. Working with the team, we’d now refined our challenge to be a non-combative, spirit-appeasing, platforming, metroidvania game that would take place within the scope of house, and already two questions stood out that would need answers right away: 1) can we make a peaceful metroidvania fun, and 2) can we design a world with metroidvania scope within a single house?

(Next up will be: Developing Non-aggressive Player Abilities. Stay tuned!)