Project Gnoomer Shooter
For this project my team and I worked to create a fun and unique combat system that allowed for satisfying gameplay loops through the combination of multiple different elemental attacks.
Quarter 1
Base Design Phase
In the first quarter of this project my team and I worked on setting the base core mechanic so we could clearly see what was exciting about the idea.
The core became two weapons that were able to interact with each other when used in conjunction. Tuning character movement, particularly when using the rocket-jump provided by the first runes reaction became a core focus.
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After toying around with how the impact is applied and character values we found a responsive character that felt in line with other boomer-shooter games
Quarter 2
Polish to Core
In the second quarter we needed to identify how these combat mechanics would feel in use and thus had to work to start developing targets. We worked to get a basic enemy implemented that would act as the base "trash" enemies that would horde around the player.
In adding them in we realized with explosions and horde enemies we wanted to focus on the power-fantasy feeling and thus designed it around exploding many enemies with them rag-dolling away after explosions.
This resulted in a much more exciting and satisfying player experience and combat feel.
Quarter 3
Level Design Beginnings
During this phase I worked on the level design of our project keeping in mind the mechanics that had been worked on over the last month and how we wanted to encourage the player behavior that we wanted.
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To do this I first designed a closer-quarters indoor area that would require the player to learn about the main types of enemies, horde enemies, flying enemies and turret enemies that would hide out of the easily accessible area.
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To go along with this, I wanted to make sure before moving on to the larger scale fights the player had familiarized themselves with the rocket jump and so in order to progress the player must use it to escape the tube and get to the upper city area where they would be hit with larger hoards of enemies rather than smaller numbers.
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This helped in creating a more natural gameplay flow that still showed off all playable mechanics and enemy types.
Quarter 4
Polish
With the team creating new runes and adjusting movement, the game had to be adapted to this new feel and as a result, the level had to once again be changed.
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The core changes that needed to happen came through increase in size and interest in the inside area.
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To do this I added a large hole that pushes the player to engage with the entire area rather than just out-running and going straight through the room.
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This made the gameplay flow much more as the player is given much clearer visual language as to where to go.
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Along with this we made many more polish changes to the interactions with the enemies as well as audio for the player and enemies interactions.
