Gameplay Video
Derelict
Solo Developer | Spring 2023
Derelict is a game project that I began during my Systems & Experience Design class during my junior year at Champlain College. The project centered around the idea of Altered States, where designers were asked to create an transportive and transformative atmosphere for the player.
Previously in the course, I was also required to make a game that centered around physicality in interaction, and I carried many lessons from that project over to this one.
For this project, I used Unity engine, C# for scripting, and Git for version control, and Ink for narrative design.
This project was created over the course of about one week, in the midst of other classwork for my Game Design degree at Champlain College.
This project involved a lot of moving parts and required me to design and implement a number of new systems and mechanics on a short, week-long turnaround. Here’s a breakdown of what this project involved:
Physics-Based Movement: A big part of the game’s toy and the fun and challenge of moment-to-moment gameplay comes from the movement system. The player is fully physically simulated, with movement inputs for lateral and vertical thrust, as well as rolling. The player has to carefully manage their acceleration and deceleration in order to collect enough resources while avoiding enemies or a high-velocity collision!
Scrap Collection: The object of the game is simply to collect an arbitrary amount of collectibles before a timer runs out, but it was important for the “altered states” aspect of the project to contextualize those collectibles in a spooky sci-fi environment. I ended up implementing a number of different collectible areas to the level with different degrees of interactivity, like shipping containers for the player to break in to, abandoned shuttles with security turrets, and simple pieces of floating wreckage.
Enemy Behavior: I created a few types of simple enemy behaviors for the player to contend with while collecting scrap. Turrets fire at a high rate, but turn slowly and are inaccurate enough to give the player a fighting chance. Balancing enemy behavior for difficulty was a challenge that required a lot of testing and iteration.
Narrative Systems: I wrote a simple, linear narrative to tutorialize to the player and convey the game’s objective. I learned how to use Ink’s Unity integration for this project!
Diegetic UI: I created UI elements that were diegetic, thematic, and functional at the same time (if a little lo-fi— I’m no artist, I’m afraid) that conveyed meaningful information like objective progress and the player’s current velocity.
This project was incredibly fun to work on, and I think it prompted me to learn a lot about movement systems, creating atmosphere, difficulty and balancing, and efficiency in narrative.
Screenshots
Players must contend with environmental hazards like turrets in order to meet their scrap quota and survive.
Thematic & functional HUD UI that feeds the sci-fi aesthetic while also providing useful readouts like objective progress, dialogue, and velocity.
A simple but spooky title screen to set the mood…
