The Thought Process

The concept for the game at its base was simple: we wanted to make a bullet hell. My focus on this game was not on narrative, but rather on mechanics, and how good it felt to move around the level. For this reason, I spent a lot of time in engine tweaking numbers and playtesting for a solid, intuitive-feeling movement result.

Below are some screenshots of both the Unity project taken at the time, as well as a screenshot of a document section where I got some numbers down.

As Lead Design, I led design discussion on which patterns we would include. We decided to have a 3-part boss fight of ramping difficulty first, then we had to decide which patterns to include where. I had to keep in mind which patterns would be more or less difficult, and how that would change based on the boss AI behavior and the grouping of different patterns together.

Some patterns were similar but changed with the phase and difficulty – for instance, the beam only covers about 30% of the screen radius in phase 1, then 50% in phase 2, all the way to 70% in phase 3. Other patterns only made sense in certain phases – the sword swing would not work in phase 1, when the boss is static.

To the left is a zoomed-out screenshot of phase 1: the moon. The boss stays in the middle of the screen. Patterns include: 2 medium rotating orbs at half radius distance, spiral pattern, and 30% coverage beam.