Jampocalypse
Shoot aliens to the beat in a top-down, four-directional rhythm game
TEAM SIZE: 5 // SOFTWARE: Unity // DURATION: 5 months (August 2023 – December 2023)
Jampocalypse was the end result of a semester-long course at Bradley, where I worked as producer to keep the rest of my team on task.
CONCEPTION
At the start of the class, our first assignment was to decide on two genres of game that we would use as the basis of our project. We chose “racing” and “rhythm” as our inspirations; although we ended up not including any racing mechanics due to scope, the idea of four-directional levels was based off of intersections!
CONTRIBUTIONS
Since we wanted to focus more on the rhythm parts of our project, I helped by refining the beat maps of each level. What this entailed was ensuring that the timing of each enemy spawn was in sync with the chosen song, which lane enemies they spawned in, and what enemy would spawn.
Although I helped designed Level 2 from scratch, once all three levels were implemented, most of my time was dedicated to adjusting time stamps for enemy timing and enemy spawning. Due to the nature of our beatmap, each level required several passes and iterations from my team to ensure fair gameplay.
However, since most of our original level work ending up being too difficult, we decided to create a “New Game+” version of the game to preserve our earlier beatmaps. On top of that, both the tutorial and Level 1+ feature a song I personally wrote!
Enemies approach the player in time with the song. The faster the beat, the faster the enemies!
After defeating four enemies without taking damage, the player scores is multiplier until they lose health.
An example of a beatmap used to determine enemy spawning and movement for each level.
It's dangerous to go alone!
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