Survivors Game
Solo Developer | Spring 2024 - Ongoing
Featured Devlog
This project began its life as an assignment for my Advanced Seminar: Game Design class at Champlain College during my senior year. I was inspired by the swath of survivors-style games that have come up in the wake of Magic Survival and Vampire Survivors, and wanted to try my hand at creating one of my own!
As part of this project, I made a series of short, informal dev diaries each sprint that really show the progression of the game and the challenges I faced over time.
For this project, I used used Unity engine, C# for scripting, and Git for version control.
I had at one point considered Unreal, but the game’s 2D art style and the need for very rapid prototyping seemed better suited to Unity.
Screenshots & Gifs
An early build, featuring some absolutely gorgeous designer art and the beginnings of the game’s upgrade system.
A mid-development build, featuring enemy and environmental art as well as some iteration on game feel, balancing, and user feedback.
What intrigues me about the emerging survivors-style genre is the simplicity and accessibility of the core mechanics around which everything builds. Games in this style tend to have a very straightforward and accessible set of primary mechanics, and then layer on depth through systems like upgrades, character selection, and meta-progression.
This project also involved a lot of learning about game feel and user feedback. My professor and peers during the class this project originated from provided tons and tons of useful critique, especially surrounding how to make the moment-to-moment gameplay juicy and tactile.
For a look at some of my process in design and some information about the challenges I met while working on this project, see the featured devlog above!
Below is the series of dev diaries that I made over the course of this project: