About the Game
Project: Groundhog is a 2D arcade shooter submitted for Mossflwr's VTuber Tiny Game Jam. Inspired by Mobile Suit Gundam and All You Need is Kill, you pilot a mech to destroy AI mechs and salvage their components to upgrade your own mech.
Project: Groundhog was developed in Unity in one week. I worked together with my friend, Zoey Hoiting, who worked on programming, art, as well as UI/UX. My task for the project was level design as well as lead in audio.
Game Design
For the game jam, the optional theme was "upgrades." Together, Zoey and I came up with a gameplay loop where the player faces a swarm of enemies. Every time the player destroys an enemy, it drops an upgrade that can enhance the player's gameplay experience.
After thinking about the setting and atmosphere of the game, we went with the idea of mechs. As a result, the upgrades the player picks up can improve the movement, health, and attack-rate of their mech.
Level Design
Inspired by the worldbuilding of Blame!, Groundhog's level design attempts to capture the atmosphere of brutalism by having massive buildings that are tightly packed together.
Regarding gameplay, the goal was to have players actively use the environment to their advantage. Whether it be to go out guns blazing in an open field, funneling enemies into a hallway to pick them off one-by-one, or going around buildings to avoid enemy fire, Groundhog's level encourages player agency.
Original sketch of the level design with open fields (large circles), connecting paths, and buildings (blue figures)
Final design of the level
Audio
When it came to the sound effects, I recorded live foleys as well as used samples I already owned. Then, I ran them through some post-processing to get the desired effect.
When making the main theme, I looked into music from DOOM as well as Cyberpunk 2077 as inspiration. The result is a heavy bass track that captures the destructive nature of the game. Feel free to give it a listen!