I was the Technical Designer for Battletoads. This was a hugely multi-disciplinary role, and meant I got to prototype lots of gameplay, design enemy behaviour and implement all the in-engine cutscenes.
There were three levels I had to design and code from start to finish. They were more simple minigame/story beat fare but had very tricky deadlines to compensate.
The Trials of Pummel Horse
The Trials consisted of three minigames around a sport theme. We have archery, ball sport and gymnastics. This had the tightest deadline of all with just two weeks from inception to final art.
Rock and A Hard Place
Three more minigames centred around one of the toads, Pimple. He’s in a fight to the death while his two companions punch trees and snap pictures.
Once again, I more or less had carte blanche and the games benefitted from several weeks of iteration. In keeping with the game’s tone I was keen early on to have Pimple be the only one to contribute to the fight.
Finale
The finale was a QTE boss fight. The focus here was the emotional end to the story over mechanical difficulty. There are lots of epic wide shots of the toads and the Dark Queen struggling together.
This began with my prototyping the interactions for the toads in isolation, then writing out a shot list and working with one of our artists to bring it all to life. The splitscreen part at the end was a little ugly to set up with a bunch of extra cameras and render textures but it was so worth it.
johannes 