Krampus vs Clause | JWilliams Design

"Krampus vs Clause" is a Christmas-themed shooter created for the holiday season of 2023.

A personal game jam of sorts, the entire project had a start date of November 1 with a target ship date of December 24. This meant I was forced to juggle a full time day job, family and friend responsibilities, as well as the usual holiday season activities alongside the total design and development of this game.

Principles and Pillars

Overly Christmas themed, including Unreal and J4K logos at startup
Family friendly, a game for all ages
Simple gameplay, minimal control scheme
- Arrow keys to move the player, space bar to fire "candies", mouse to navigate and select menus
Avoid a definitive "Game Over" scenario, player should have to restart the level at the most
Level and Environment Design
- 3 levels
- Levels 1 and 2 repeat gameplay within different environments
- Level 3 a separate and distinct end of game experience
  - Level 1 - "Road to the North Pole" : Wilderness area outside the gates of the North Pole
  - Level 2 - "Main Street, North Pole" : Town surrounding Santa's Workshop, where elves live and play
  - Level 3 - "The Workshop" : Interior of Santa's Workshop, Krampus' ultimate goal
Obstacles spawned in the level themed to that level's environment
End of level boss encounters use level obstacles in some fashion, along with an additional action to give a unique challenge.
Level 3 'Krampus' encounter uses elements from previous 2 levels

Pre Production

'KvC' began as an idea on Halloween night of 2023. November 1st began the brainstorming and concepting of the overall project. Over the course of 2 weeks, I researched Christmas-themed games while also listing my own pillars to form a basis of what I was looking for. Many games with a Christmas theme either just took place during the holiday season (Spiderman: Miles Morales, Dead Rising 4, Bayonetta 2, etc), or had a holiday themed DLC (Duke Nukem: Nuclear Winter, Saint's Row 4: How The Saints Saved Christmas, Hitman: Holiday Hoarders).

Then I came across "Elf Bowling". That sparked some memories as I remember the time it came out. In late 1998, "Elf Bowling" took over offices, libraries, and school computer labs everywhere. It struck me as not just a minor distraction, but something that added just that little bit of holiday spirit to a lot of people that year.

Watching gameplay from "Elf Bowling", I noticed the game oozed Christmas, was simple to play, and didn't take itself too seriously. All great qualities for the project I was putting together.

While I liked the presentation and simplicity, I personally prefer more player movement and interaction.

Keeping simple gameplay in mind, I decided on a game loop that mimics a minigame from a mobile ad, with adjustments. In it, the player is moving left or right, shooting rolling obstacles and gaining powerups.

Allowing the player more movement choice, such as moving forward and backward along with left and right felt more natural and also opened up some level possibilities. Having the character actually move down a lane gave an opportunity to decorate the level in a very festive style and gave a better feel for level progression.

As far as obstacles are concerned, random health amounts with a random chance at dropping a powerup seemed to be the way to go. They can be themed to fit into the level currently being played with very little modification to the code.

With the gameplay loop decided and the possibilities that it offered, I felt that I really had an opportunity to create a Christmas game that was simple to play, gave the player a reasonable amount of challenge, and offered a story through environments.

The Action Zone

The Action Zone is where most of the gameplay happens throughout a level. It consists of a movable box with a camera attached and contains the player character.

The zone moves forward on player character overlap of the green box.
Both red boxes are blocking objects
- The forward box prevents the player character from moving through the green overlap zone, leaving the entire action zone behind
- The rear box prevents the player from moving backwards, ensuring an always forward approach to level progression
- The rear box also has an overlap function that destroys obstacles that have gotten past the player
The camera is placed to allow adequate view of the entire action zone and also show level decorations along the sides of the lanes.

Along with the camera and character bounds, the Action Zone also has a set of spawn points for the level obstacles

Attaching the spawn points directly to the Action Zone keeps the activity tied to the player location, rather than having obstacles traveling the full length of the level.
Obstacle health benefits from this method
- There is a more immediate and smoother transition in obstacle health values as the player power level increases or decreases.
Spawn patterns are determined by a random selection of 10 different variations.
Late in the level there is a trigger which signals the Action Zone to stop spawning obstacles in preparation of the end level boss fight.

Obstacles

Obstacles are the main challenge for the player. Generating a random health amount forces the player to make decisions regarding whether or not the player has time to destroy an obstacle, choose a different obstacle, or avoid them completely.

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Pickups dropped by obstacles offer two types of power ups.

"2x" doubles the rate of fire
"Elves" add a sidekick to Santa, up to 2, that mimic his movements and firing patterns
Getting hit by an obstacle takes 1 powerup away. If no powerups remain on the player, the character is reset to the last obtained checkpoint (or the level start position if no checkpoint has been reached)
This makes the player more powerful without directly changing damage values.
Obstacle health scales directly with the amount of powerups the player has to ensure a consistent challenge.
- Example: The player starts with no powerups, obstacle health is a low random amount. The player gains a "2x" powerup, doubling their rate of fire and causing twice the damage in the same amount of time. Therefore, obstacle health is doubled to compensate.

Level Design

Levels are very basic, with one lane, a start point, 3 checkpoints, and a boss area at the end.

The simple design allowed the level to be modular, duplicating gameplay easily across levels while creating different environments and visuals to set them apart
The player viewport is angled in a way to see both sides of the lane, letting the level set a scene and tell a story

Each level ends in a boss encounter within its own "arena"

A transition trigger placed just after the final checkpoint initiates a camera blend from the action zone to the boss arena.
- During this transition, the player character is moved from the action zone to the boss arena
The same rules apply in the boss arena as the action zone
- The player cannot back out of the arena
- The previous checkpoint is used as a respawn if the player gets hit by obstacles. From there they move through the transition trigger again and pick the fight up where they left off.

Sounds and Music

As development commenced, the style and genre of music began to be a question. Sticking with the theme of "oozing Christmas", I wanted music that exhibited classic Christmas vibes but also provided a fun and upbeat atmosphere to match the tempo of the gameplay. Christmas carols with a rock guitar twist served the purpose almost perfectly.

I also took the opportunity to select additional tracks that play during a level introduction. Using a more traditional style of music emphasized the environment and gave the feeling of a typical day that Santa's elves may be having before Krampus' arrival. The record scratch and abrupt end to the music at Krampus' reveal indicates to the player that the level is about to begin.

A final touch that was very important to me, and undoubtedly was my favorite part of the whole process, was the inclusion of "Elf Chirps". An homage to the original Elf Bowling game, Elf Chirps are voice lines that poke fun at the situation overall.

Inspiration for the lines came from different sources such as the classic holiday movie "Home Alone", some were original and scripted myself, and others were recreated from Elf Bowling.

The lines were recorded using Audacity, while modifying their pitch and tempo.

Activation of Elf Chirps depends on the amount of elf sidekicks the player has equipped.

Picking up an elf powerup plays a battle cry for that particular elf.
If the player has both elf sidekicks already equipped, gaining another elf powerup will play a random Elf Chirp instead.

Boss Encounters

Each of the boss encounters are themed to the level they reside in. They use the same obstacles from the lane, however due to the shortened play area and reduced amount of time the player has to deal with them, their health values are capped considerably lower.

For variety, the encounters include a twist from the standard level play and also get more complex and slightly more challenging in subsequent levels.

Level 1 Boss - Ice Abomination

Simple encounter for a first level
Boss moves from side to side at varying speeds
- Forces players to contend with obstacles rather than be stationary
Icicles are used as an addition to obstacles
- Non-destructible, must be dodged
- Do not drop power ups
Boss health is set high to give the illusion of a tough opponent and feeling of accomplishment when defeated

Level 2 Boss - Construct Bob

Faster obstacle cadence than the previous boss
An attentive player can see the pattern boss movements and preemptively destroy a machine, allowing a window to do a lot of damage to the boss
- Gaps between the machines were kept so the player could still do damage to the boss regardless whether they destroyed machines or not

Level 3 Boss - Krampus

Final showdown with Krampus within Santa's Workshop
Machines from level 2 are used to spawn obstacles for the length of the fight.
- Power Ups are also spawned in random position to make up for the lack of a level for the player to progress through, and also for obstacles that cannot be destroyed.
3 phase fight, health based
- Phase 1 (4000 - 3000 health) - Krampus stands still while the player deals damage and gathers power ups
- Phase 2 (3000 - 2000 health) - Krampus takes advantage of a larger encounter area and begins to reposition anywhere within the arena.
  - At each stop, Krampus launches a snowball obstacle from level 1
- Phase 3 (2000 - 0 health) - Krampus keeps her movement mechanic, but ceases launching snowballs.
  - "Gift Bombs" fall in random locations and turn into non-destructible obstacles themselves