top of page

The Grim Reaper's Commission

Overall Development time: 34 Hrs

Personal Project

Build Date: 12/20/2022 - 1/2/2023

Introduction

I participated in the Virtus Game Jam where was I given 2 weeks to create a game within the theme of Four Elements.

​

I created a top-down action game where you must gather ingredients to complete different elements of a customer's orders gaining buffs depending on how many ingredients you wish to invest.

​

Retrospective

​

Play the game here

​

Project Details

What I did:

  • Took Game from Ideal to Fully Playable

  • Created Design Documents in order to illustrate gameplay and used Trello to keep track of progress

  • Use OOP to create a robust, scalable, combat system

What I had help with:​

End Product

What I learned

  • Anim Notify and Anim Notify States

  • Paper ZD (Plugin for using Animation Notifies inside of Unreal Paper 2D Flipbooks)

  • Actor Components

  • Good OOP Practices inside Unreal

  • Blueprint Interfaces

  • Game Instances (Making data persist through levels in Unreal)

  • Gameplay Tags

  • Melee Combo System

  • The importance of creating UI design early in the conception of the project

  • PLAYTESTING

  • What elements of a project are necessary for a complete experience

  • Tutorials

Day 1 Result (Time Spent: 4 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 1

  • I tried to use Flow Charts and Design Documents in order to keep myself on track and ensure that I plan out the intention. By doing this I was able to in a way Pseudocode problems before I had to tackle them in the engine. I am not the strongest programmer so by planning stuff and lots of tutorials I was able to create a pretty scalable system within Unreal.

  • I also created a Trello Board to help me simulate working in a team environment. I feel that by myself I would have skipped this step since once I got the idea the only one I need to communicate with is myself. I found that having all my ideas in one place helped me get a good grasp on the game.

CustomerLogic.PNG

Flowchart for the Customers ordering food

AnimBP ComboSystem.PNG

Animation Graph for the Combo attack system

ComboSystem.PNG

Jump to Node for the attacks in Paper ZD

Day 2 Result (Time Spent: 2.5 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 2

  • Solidified the Overall Game Idea: The game is a simple platformer where you serve food to customers, as you try to keep your business afloat.

  • Set up a Blueprints Interface for collecting items and for talking to customers

Day 3 Result (Time Spent: 3 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 3

  • I worked on the UI for the making of items and gave feedback on whether or not you got the correct item.

  • Added an animation effect allows the player to understand which item was placed incorrectly

  • Customers now walk to the counter and order food and leave properly.

Day 4 Result (Time Spent: 7 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 4

  • My Game Idea shifted after playing through the platforming section and fixing a crash that wiped a lot of progress on the game. I think stepping away helped me see that the platforming section was hard to make fun of in a limited amount of time without tons of iteration on the level design side, so I ultimately decided to shift the direction of how players will obtain ingredients to be more engaging.

    • The player will have to collect ingredients in order to feed hungry customers and build up their strength to continue to meet the demand of the customers.

  • Implemented an enemy spawner and enemies that chase the player

  • Implemented 4 abilities that can be upgraded by using perks.

    • Mine, Slow, Poison, Projectile (These will be the 4 elements the player will have to manage)​

  • Created Win/Loss Conditions

    • Implemented a player death and restart level​

  • Started to implement Game Instances to allow for currency and player health to carry over between nights.

Day 5 Result (Time Spent: 6 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 5

​

  • Today was all about getting the data implemented into the game. I separated the perks into Major and Minor Categories and proceeded to create a data table that will hold the customer's order.

    • Player can now upgrade stats and overall it feels like a game​ loop

  • Implemented a few models from the Free Marketplace Assets Tomorrow plan is to have the core game finished so I can get playtesters while I implement VFX and SFX as well as more assets.

Day 6 Result (Time Spent: 8 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 5

  • Today I spent a lot of time trying to use Niagara to make custom visual effects until I figured it didn't make sense when I have the marketplace at my fingertips.

  • I got some of the free VFX that I collected over the months and started moving assets over and getting sound effects into the game.

  • Implement lots of Sound FX and got the BGM to play properly and with Fade-In and Fade-Out

  • I included the loss condition working properly.

Data Table that the Customers pull from in order to created order

Day 7 Result (Time Spent: 6 Hrs)

More Detail About Day 7

  • Implemented a Main Menu to the game to complete the game loop

    • Losing the game now returns the player to the main menu.​

    • The main menu will reset the player's stats so they can play the game again

  • Replaced Art and added better descriptions to the Drinks in order to allow the player to have a better understanding of the effects contained within.

  • Created a better spawning effect for the enemies and polished the post-processing on levels to try and make it more pleasing.

  • Created the Itch.io Page for the game jam

Finished Ordering Process

Final Gameplay

Main Menu

Retrospective

Retrospective

  • Things I Liked​

    • I feel that I executed the overall idea however I didn't have time to implement a proper playable tutorial.​

    • I am very proud of the effect I made on the Main Menu with the camera flying in inspired by Bioshock Infinite, and the implementation of the game instance allow for me to create stats that travel between levels.

    • I am proud of the work I did on the VFX and "Game Juice" side adding camera shake and the sound effects of the abilities give them a good impact.​

  • Things that could be improved on:

    • The lack of playtesting during the production of the game made for an unbalance game experience. and the player can dodge the enemies too easily. More time tweaking AI and how it interacts would've allowed a more enjoyable experience overall​

    • I wished I had implemented a better ending to the game. The game ends after surviving 5 nights. For a game jam I wanted to keep a short experience (roughly less than 5-10 minutes on average) however I wished I had implemented a boss fight of some kind at the end to give a climatic moment to the end of the game.

bottom of page