La Famiglia takes place in 1960’s New Empire and focuses on main protagonist, Johnny Romano as lives his life as a soldier for Don Angelo and his mob, La Famiglia. After being with the mob for a year and gaining Angelo’s trust, he is tasked with the assassination of rival mob boss, Don De Luca of the De Luca crime family. Romano kills De Luca’s brother, Antonio, instead to ensure the known whereabouts of De Luca as he will attend his brother’s funeral at New Empire Church. On the day of the funeral, Romano must make his way across building rooftops in order to reach the top of the church and sneak in, Romano’s only job left to do is aim, pull the trigger and get out there alive.
INITIAL IDEAS
After playing Mafia: Definitive Edition in my spare time, I knew I had to make a game based in this mobster, crime ridden era of American History. So as soon as that opportunity was handed to me at the start of my 3rd year I knew I needed to take it. I immediately began researching the look and feel of both the Mafia series of games and real life New York in the 1960's.
FINAL CONCEPT
A mission within Mafia: Definitive Edition and the original Mafia game, both with different Mission names, follows the main protagonist as he has to complete two objectives. The main objective I focused on was entering a church via connecting rooftop with police in pursuit. The reason I chose this mission was not only because I personally really enjoyed playing it, but also because its one of the only parts of the game that shows off every mechanic the game has to offer. Driving, Shooting, Parkour elements, Police pursuit are just the first 5-10 minutes.
PLANNING
Using the connecting roofs, shooting and enemy systems and ideas for my game and getting them right were the main concern, so I first began planning out everything down to every little detail. I started looking on Google Maps for churches in the New York area to get an idea for what I was looking for. Once that was done I created this quick level design concept to understand the shape of the buildings and to give me a good look at where I could place my enemies.
LEVEL DESIGN
Finally having a good Whitebox, I began planning the look and feel of the rooftops with doors, seating areas and clotheslines. All these details were identified in the very mission I take inspiration from, aiding in the 1960's feel I wanted for the game. After mapping out these, I then added in the enemy routes along the rooftops, they unfortunately had to be changed due to the AI being unable to walk over each rooftop.
FINALISED GAME
You can find a detailed video just below that goes into more detail about decisions, blueprints and my overall opinion, but to keep it short the game came out pretty well with a few tweaks here and there that could absolutely improve the game. the concept and research I believe are its strong points and made making the game that much easier and better.