BIG TOP SHOWDOWN

Bigtop Showdown was a semester-long project developed for Bradley’s IM 389 class, “Game Production II”.

CONCEPTION

Our assignment was to complete a first-person game in Unity based off a prototype made in an earlier class. To my delight, my team settled on a prototype I originally proposed: a recoil-based parkour simulator that utilized a similar knockback system to Soldier’s grenade launcher from Team Fortress 2.

During initial ideation, we agreed to theme the project around an evil carnival, and thus, the confetti cannon was born. After pairing it with a water gun to add more complexity to combat encounters, designers shifted their attention to enemy design, level design and the balancing of game variables such as: enemy spawning and attack rate, damage output, player knockback amount, and so on.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Two of my biggest contributions to this project were the tutorial and Level 2: “The Tightrope”.

As its name suggests, my main inspiration for Level 2 was the verticality of a circus tightrope act, so the majority of the level centers around forcing the player upwards to dodge incoming enemies in order to get the upper hand on them. Unfortunately, the enemy AI ended up having difficulty traversing slopes to follow the player, but by utilizing strategic enemy spawning later on, I was still able to achieve the desired effect during gameplay.

For the tutorial, my task was to familiarize the player with the main mechanics of our game. This proved to be equal parts challenging and rewarding, and after some iteration, it ended up yielded a step-by-step sequence which not only maintained immersion, but also features fully implemented narration, VFX and one of my favorite easter eggs that I’ve ever hidden! (Good luck finding it)