Summary
This project is a short Shoot ‘Em Up project with a single Boss encounter that involves several phases and increased difficulty. The player controls a simple circular fighter with dual cannons and a laser with limited power. The Boss is a multi-layered unit that lie passively and awaits the player to approach towards it.
Once approached the player gets pushed back and the Boss starts to construct itself and engage the player. The player can fight the boss with their dual cannons as default, but can also fire the laser at the same time. The power of the laser becomes exhausted rather quickly and need to recharge for a few seconds. Additionally, the hitbox of the player expands when using the laser, which makes the player more exposed to projectiles.
Specifications
Developed partially at The Game Assembly
Developed partially as a hobby project.
Engine: Unity 5.x
All assets, art, animations, VFX, coding and design is done by me.
Scripting language: C#
Gameplay time: 4 to 5 minutes
Known issues: minor animation bugs
One of the challenges involved was getting the animations to feel right and engaging. Since the Boss contained many pieces it needed to structured as a prefab with a root parent with multiple layers of children, so each part could be animated in its own local space. Then I controlled the animations with script and the Unity’s animation state machine. The main root of the Boss is the only part that’s not animated, rather it’s moving with script to randomized positions depending on its phase.
All animations was done in the engine, using 2D features and the sprite sheet feature. At the time the 2D tools was a relatively new in Unity so it was a bit of a learning curve to get everything functional.