Death to Love

A core pillar of the overall experience was to stay true to the classic beat-em-up formula: no matter what we introduce, it has to be in service of a nice and heavy melee blow. 

We were inspired by this Vlambeer video and added/modified some features to hone in on the visceral experience of a well-landed blow, contributing to our pillar of "Melee First".

• Visual effects, like hitstop, particle effects, screenshake, etc.

• Sound effects of blunt guitar hits

• Damage/Hitbox adjustments to make attacks hit stronger and wider

The original UI was largely focused on functionality and readability over aesthetics. Using blocky minimalistic buttons and simple sans-serif fonts, we wanted the focus to be on the information provided by our UI, not the appearance- since we wanted the players to focus on the action, not the surrounding information.

However, playtesters pointed out that the minimalistic UI felt dissonant from the punk rock theme of the game. From this, I learned that UI needs to be cohesive and consistent with the narrative and visual aesthetics of the game. Thus, we revised our UI to visually match the punk rock aesthetic, which actually allowed for even better immersion.

• Too "out there" for a beat-em-up; does this even belong in this genre?

• Do we need guns for a power fantasy? Won't melee attacks work just fine?

• Thematic issue: The story is mostly about the effects of police violence. Wouldn't it be off-putting for our punk protagonists to use firearms?

• This would work in a more controlled environment with less enemies- but do we want to sacrifice the mowing down/"Musou" fantasy for that?

• Art Debt: We clearly don't have art budget to finish this within a quarter

• No matter how many iterations we go through, it's hard to imagine one character being the "helper" to another

• No real art budget (all handled through particle system)

• Compared to super system, the heightened fantasy- the "hype"- is much less noticeable 

• Adding in crowd control is nice- and it also complements the original design goal of augmenting melee attacks, not replacing them

• Not sure if sliding itself is interesting enough to set our game apart from others

This was my last project with my longtime team, and I learned a ton- from game feel to designing around a certain constraint to even UI. 

+Big team- 15 people! Learned a lot about communication and work delegation, and how to respect people's time.

+Unforgettable lessons about game feel- learned that actions that feel good can serve multiple functions. 

-I wish the full design had a chance to be implemented- especially knowing that art was our only bottleneck. 

-There are some narrative ideas that I really wanted to push for, like more neurodivergent and trans representation, that were cut due to time constraints.