Little Howling Hood

This is my first game-project, made in cooperation with Miguel Costa.

About the project

Specifications

• Genre: Platformer, Adventure;
• Single/Multiplayer: Single player;
• Target Audience: Teenagers, Young adults;
• Target Platform: Windows PC;
• Engine/Tools: LOVE2D, Lua;
• Development Time (approx.) 3 months.

One day, on a way to her grandma, The Little Red Riding Hood stumbles over a tree branch and falls unconscious. She wakes up to the dark forest with the full moon shining over her. Resuming her path and flawlessly reaching her grandmother’s house, she realises that due to the full moon she has turned into a werewolf - a curse that has been torturing her since she first visited the forest as a little child. The grandma, seeing the werewolf still dressed in a red hood and carrying the basket is terrified. The woman thinks that the wolf has eaten her little granddaughter and immediately calls the hunters that begin chasing the Little Howling Hood.
After a while, the heroine manages to escape the chase and stops somewhere in the forest to get her breath where a strangely transformed forest bird (an owl or a woodpecker) attacks her. After dealing with it, the Little Red moves forth and sees a fox sitting by the tree. The fox warns the girl that the forest is having hard times now, and that there is danger in every corner. It appears that the Forest Spirit is invading the thicket with the fierce animals’ souls because there has lately been a lot of hunters killing the children of the Forest. For the Little Red, meeting with the Spirit is the only chance to break the curse and become a normal human. The fox shows the path to the Forest Spirit and notes that the Little Red has a scent of a human so she will inevitably be attacked by the raging animals. The fox also tells the girl that in order to summon the Spirit, she will need to gather three items: the leaf of the Fragrant Pine, the Bonfire Coal and the Moon. The Little Red will encounter each of these in the three path she will have to pass on her way to the heart of the thicket.
There begins the main quest of the Little Red. Determined to reason the outraged Spirit, she fights lots of ghostly animals on her journey. As she defeats them all and approaches the Forest Spirit’s lair, it becomes clear that she will need to prove herself once more in order to make him grant her wish. Aggressive towards all the humans, the Spirit challenges the Little Red, promising he would resolve her destiny once she proves her own spirit to be more powerful than his.

Inspired by the Little Red Riding Hood, Little Howling Hood is a short 2D platformer in which the players control the Little Red in a werewolf form. The goal is to pass through the forest, while fighting the enemy animals, and collect three artifacts.
The player’s abilities are quite simple: the Little Red can fight by hitting the target with her basket and claws; climb certain trees, jump and run.
The normal enemies that the players will encounter are: the Owl, that launches ranged projectiles, and the Boar, that charges at the player and can knock up.
At the end of the journey, the players will be challenged by a boss - a Forest Spirit in a wolf form, holding a staff with the Moon. The boss has two stages: first, he will launch timed projectiles, and, once low on health points, he will switch to a more aggressive attack by trying to stomp the player with his staff and causing an earthquake. The ultimate goal of the game is to defeat the boss.
As part of the requirements for this project, all of the visual assets, animations, environment art, and physics were made by hand.

Media

Trailer

Little Howling Hood Trailer

Spec Sheet

Little Howling Hood Spec Sheet

GDD is also available upon request.

My Input

My input was focused around:

• Enemies’ Attacks

I have worked on the attacks of the Air and Land enemies and their overall behaviour.

• Boss’ AI

I have developed a straightforward state-based AI for the boss fight, the behaviour of the projectiles and the “stomping” attack.

• Physics

In a collaboration with my colleague, I have been writing the vector physics for the in-game gravity, collisions, and player’s mechanics.

• Visual Assets & Animations

I have drawn and animated most of the visual assets in the game, including the main character, the background design, collectibles, platforms, and the boss.