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Runeslinger

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  • Puzzle Battler

  • 2019

  • Unity

  • Team of 4

  • Designer

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  • 3rd place winner in TAGD Fall 2019 game jam

  • Puzzle game where players attempt to chain together patterns on a grid

  • Short intense gameplay that rewards players for making the most of their moves

  • Heavy focus on balance, and rewarding game feel

  • Play at https://willfish-dev.itch.io/runeslinger

Overview

In Runeslinger, players attempt to deal damage to baddies by forming patterns with their "bullet-runes" on their grid. However, every time a pattern is formed, the unused bullet-rune is moved over a space. This allows clever players to chain together multiple patterns, allowing them make an even stronger attack.

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Enemies attack the player on a timer. The player will have to be fast. However, they'll also have to smart as well. Every time they make a move, the enemy gets a little closer to attacking. This time element adds intensity to the game and encourages players to attempt to chain together patterns.

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Outside of this core mechanic, most design work went into making sure the mechanics were presented clearly to the player, adding game feel through sound and VFX, and balancing to make sure the game was appropriately difficult and unfun tactics such as "pattern spamming" were discouraged.

Responsibilites

  • Designer

    • Mechanic/System Design

    • Game Feel

    • Balancing

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  • Artist

    • Characters

    • UI Art

    • Background

    • VFX

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  • Audio

    • Compose music​

    • SFX

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  • Did a little coding as well

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Team

Erik Priest

  • Developer

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Excellent programmer and unity developer! Fellow Ag.

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Miguel Urbina

  • Developer

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Though learning Unity at the time of the project, Miguel contributed greatly to our game's successful implementation and has improved drastically in his coding ability. A hard worker with a commitment to learning, and a all around nice guy. Fellow Ag.

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Rami Abu-Hamdan

  • Designer

  • Artist

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Fellow Ag and former designer at TAMU's LIVE LAB. Has the rare skill of being able to properly scope a project. A great designer and great friend.

Postmortem

What went well

  • Attention to game feel made the game a pleasure to control and play.

  • Pattern chaining puzzle combined with timer allowed for engaging tactical game play that felt rewarding when successfully executed.

  • Good teamwork and management lead to relatively good execution in all areas In other words, good polish
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What went wrong

  • Game's mechanics could too easily be exploited with unfun strategies. More rigorous paper playtesting should have caught these problems.

  • Due to time limitations, necessary quick fixes to exploitable strategies resulted in confusing game mechanics.

  • Lack of restraint in art direction lead to busy visuals that distracted from gameplay.

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What I would have done differently

  • Playtest more and earlier to find and fix subtle design problems.

  • With more time, would have designed in more variation between levels.

  • Be more mindful of visual clarity and economy when designing visuals.

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