Flux Firefight
Project Details
Team Size: 3
Engine: Unity
Languages: C#
Hardware: PC
Roles: Level Design, Systems Design
Flux Firefight is a chaotic top-down shooter that takes the randomness of slot wheel gambling and makes it into an RPG Shooter mechanic. The game takes place in Neo Vegas, a world of 80's nostalgia, evocative of Blade Runner's Los Angeles. New Vegas is beset by the Flux, a force of chaos that is spewing the features of popular 80's sci-fi films into the world. The player must travel to each of the Flux portals, enter them, and destabilize them to break their connection to the real world.
Level Design:
First I researched the IP, in particular the design and layout of the U.S.S. Sulaco, the ship from Alien 2. I condensed a few different ship blueprints/layouts, found online, into one cohesive design I could shrink and apply to our game, and grey boxed the ship in engine.
I proceeded to build three large spaces (and connecting passages) based on areas depicted in the movie. I arranged them to fit an alternate story I wrote that accommodated the goals of the game at large while allowing us to play in iconic areas from the franchise.
After laying out the basic story and areas, I did a second pass dedicated entirely to secondary areas, loot rooms, and secrets as we believe these are a necessity for the genre. My final pass was purely dedicated to enemy placement and level pacing based on repeat play testing by the team and friends. The entire level was composed from a combination of 2 asset packs acquired from the Unity marketplace.
Systems Design:
My roll as systems designer involved developing our core concept of gambling as mechanic into full fledged features. I designed a feature that eschewed the need for health bars and stats systems. Instead, when either the player or an enemy is hit, a slot machine spins. While death is one slot on the reals, status effects, points, and random chaos all exist as well. Whatever lines up occurs.
I designed similar mechanics for power ups and item shops. For example, one power-up gives the player unlimited ammo but swaps their active weapon every 3 seconds. For item shops, players find golden slot machines with different numbers of charges. Instead of selecting a new weapon, they pay a fee, pull a level, and see what the reels give them.
