Super Sonic Fish
A physics based roguelike arcade shooter
University Project | Unity Engine 6 | C# | Game designer / Programmer / Director
This project was part of my study at Hanze, going from creating a business idea and building a game based on the target audience we are trying to appease. The process started from researchinbg the gaming market to making a demo of our game.
We had the honor to win the
"Best of festival" at our study's
A bit about the project
Choosing on what kind of game we'd want to make came down on compromising between what we saw was populer in thae market versus the team's skillset on how well we think we can execute a concept. Our game was initially going to be a horror that was physics based (another sub category that showed popularity), except we found players much more engaged when shooting the enemy which had us pivot to what we have now.
As a designer I was responsible for
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Designed the core gameplay loop
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Designed 5 diffrnt enemy AIs
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Balncing the game
Why Make It Physics Based?
Looking at the number of games that supassed 1,000 wishlists on Steam and the Youtube viewership each category receives on average among aother statistics, physics based games where on of the categories that stood out in performance. I have a couple theories why that is, and it has to do with how physics creates a more widely interpretable environment. One of the pillars that make a game fun is the learning of a system to finding optimal strategies to beating the game. Is stops being fun is when the player feel like the've found the best strategy they can keep on executing which often is the end state a player have with a game with replayability. To keep the player in a state of learning and iterating on strategies, you need to eighther hide the stats or create enough variables so the player cannot easily figure a winnig strategy. I think the ideal is the game is balanced in a way the player feels compelled to explore all strategies the system enables. Having a systems based on physics is a great way to harden decyphering the best strategy with the number of variabled it introduces and lengthening the enjoyability of a game.
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I also think there's an esthetic aspect physics brings that give games an easy way to gain authenticity at relatively low cost. Games with physics asthetic can get away with less polish since physics in games are always a little janky, and players are already primed to expect that as part of the esthetic and charm. That is also partially why
Coding Showcase
Unity Engine 6 | C#
As a progreammer I was responsible for...
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Projectile based shooting
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Player Physics Movement
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Camera System
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An object pooling system
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Destruction Effect
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​5 diffrent enemy AIs
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Optimisation
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​Audio Management
Sonic Fish
EnemyAI that launches itself forward periodically at the player, It applies force on itself to hover upright, pivot, and propell itself. It has force correction to preventitself ricocheting off the ground prematurily.
Artillery Whale
Artillery guns that rotate and shoots toward the player in arcs which explodes on impact.
Node based path finding
Node based path finding: Deprecated version of the sonic fish that wonders randomly by selecting nodes on the map and occasionally pathfind past the player within a radius (red hue) in a timely manner.
Object Pooler
Object pooler that handles bullets among other things like particles or prefabs with child objects to reduce overhead in creating and destroying objects. (In the Hierarchy you can see bullet objects being enabled chronologically through a list as the shats are being fired)
AI Vision & Behavior
A classic cone vission system, except it take the target's collider as a profile and set points on the edges to determin if part of the target is visible through raycast.
Flying fish AI
A flying enemy that circles the player, periodically shooting and avoidinhg obstacles in the map. The fish uses physics to fly and follow a waypoint that circles the player in a wave at a set distance, giving it a natural movement.
Node based path finding: Deprecated version of the sonic fish that wonders randomly by selecting nodes on the map and occasionally pathfind past the player within a radius (red hue) in a timely manner.