Reaping Havoc
Time-bending graveyard survival.
Development Info
Dev Name: GGJ22
Released: 2022
Genre: Twin-Stick Shooter
Engine: Unity 2020
Development Time: 48 Hours
Role: Artist, Designer
Key Responsibilities
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Gameplay Design - Concepting, Tweaking and Balancing the enemies and player to create fun gameplay
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Art Creation - Creating, optimising and placing art assets in-engine
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Scripting - Writing scripts to improve the game-feel, such as screen shake and colour inversion shader
Development Goals
Mirrored: The theme for the Global Game-Jam was "Duality" (This was an absolute cracker of a theme, by the way). Our team immediately latched onto the duality of Life and Death. In order to spin this on it's head, we discussed what it would be like to play as the "bad guy", which led us to the Grim Reaper protecting his graveyard from disgruntled villagers. The key feature that came out of this discussion was the ability to flip to the sprit world to reap the spirits of your enemies for HP.
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Fast-Paced: From the outset, our teams goal with this gamejam was to make something with a very quick learning curve. This top-down shooter only has three verbs: Run, Shoot and Flip.
The enemies were designed to be very aggressive and the player won't get very far without utilising the ability to flip to the spirit realm to regain health. This flip state both allows the players to take a breather and to collect health from downed enemies - enterprising players will also realise that doing so allows them to line up shots, giving them an edge in the fight.
Development Notes
Inversion: Partway through the gamejam, I we realised that we would need to show that the player has 'flipped' to the spirit realm. I took the initiative to implement a shader with unity's UDP (and plenty of googling) that inverts the colours of all sprites that the material was applied to.
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SCREENSHAKE: I felt the game felt a bit 'flat' near the end of development, so I created a script that will lightly shake the screen every time the player shoots. I was inspired by Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman's "Nuclear Throne" in this regard.
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Pathfinding: Realistically it wasn't feasible for enemies to pathfind around the level on our short time constraint (not to mention lack of a programmer), so I think I aught to have flagged the enemies and their projectiles to walk through obstacles in the level. The enemies speed and projectile speed would of course needed to have been changed to accommodate this.
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Bug or a Feature?: Interestingly, there is a bug on the itch.io release where occasionally a huge handful of enemies spawn on the first wave. I actually find the chaotic nature of all the enemies at once to be fun and, had we more time, I would have created an increasing enemy wave mechanic.
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