Exorcism
Exorcism is a top-down, twin-stick shooter,
in which you are constantly taking damage
and killing is the only way to survvive.
2023
Q3 & Q4
Project Trailer
8 Week Duration
Unreal Engine
Solo Project
Windows
Single Player &
Local Coop
Key Responsibilities:
Designed & Implemented a Game Mode
Designed & Implemented a Weapon
Designed & Implemented 3 Enemies
Other Content worked on:
Balance, UI, VFX, SFX, Leaderboard,
3D Assets, and Materials.
Role & Tasks
For this project, my main responsibility was to create a
game mode, a weapon, and an enemy for a top-down, twin-stick shooter.
I was given a project base, in which I needed to develop the content,
without breaking any of the existing systems, as the intention was to create an album of top-down, twin-stick shooters, resulting in a similar concept to that of a jukebox.
Intended Player Experience
Quick Runs
Stressful
Players should constantly be sitting on
the edge of their seat, as they are
required to make moment-to-moment decisions.
Arcade-like
The game should feel to players
like an arcade game, sharing similarities
and key features of arcade games.
The Intended Player Experience was used to drive design decisions and
to validate whether iterations successfully achieved their objectives.
The duration of a single run should be short but sweet.
Game Mode & Systems
Overview
The objective of the game mode is to survive as long as possible, fighting enemies in an enclosed space.
The player is constantly losing health, which is amplified as the Exorcism Meter rises.
Chaos Crystals (pick up) restore the player to full health and mana (ammunition), while also providing a random Magic Type (Projectile Weapon), at the cost of increasing the player’s Exorcism Meter.
When killing an enemy, a portion of the player’s health is restored.
The Hot-Streak System allows players to reduce the Exorcism Meter by killing multiple enemies in quick succession.
Visualization of Resource Loop, made with Machinations.
Resource Loop
Each system of the core loop (the above-mentioned systems, excluding the Hot-Streak System) plays an integral part in the game's structure and balance.
Focusing on the interconnectivity of systems, helped ensure a cohesive design in which resources and player decisions are tightly integrated into the core of the game while preventing elements from being superfluous or disconnected from gameplay.
Exorcism System
The Exorcism Meter determines the rate at which players lose health.
The higher the meter the larger the health loss. Furthermore, it controls the enemy spawning system.
Making players constantly & increasingly lose health serves as a baseline to achieve each aspect of the intended player experience.
The increasingly larger loss of health naturally limits the duration of a single play session.
Constant health loss also forces the player to stay on their toes to regain health, supporting the intended experience of being “Stressful”.
Chaos Crystals
Chaos Crystals are a pick-up, that is always present (one at a time) and is spawned at a random location in the level.
When collected, players receive:
- a random Magic Type with limited mana (projectile weapon with limited ammo)
- Full Health
- Increased Exorcim Meter
Players are dependent on Chaos Crystals to restore health as they provide the means to kill enemies and restore health directly. This feeds back into the difficulty increase as well as limiting the duration of a run.
The randomized spawn locations help make the player experience more stressful as they need to quickly reach the next pickup when low on health.
Hot-Streak System
The Hot-Streak System allows players to slightly reduce the Exorcism Meter.
Killing an enemy starts a Hot-Streak, a time-limited window of opportunity.
Each enemy killed within this timer increases the Hot-Streak (kill count) and refreshes the duration.
Every 3 kills within the Hot-Streak reduces Exorcism slightly. The reduction is slightly increased at 6 and 9 kills.
The length of the opportunity window depends on the Magic Type (weapon).
While not crucial to the core, it allows for more skill expression, as players can optimize & delay their demise. This also resembles arcade games, as they would frequently allow players to perform actions for bonus points.
Furthermore, the short windows help make the game more “Stressful”.
Weapon
The game includes 7 weapons of which 6 of them are modified and rebalanced versions of weapons provided in the base project.
I will not go over the modified weapons in detail, but will briefly mention one of them and give detailed information about the other one.
Chain Lightning
The Chain Lightning is a high-accuracy Magic Type (weapon) with little mana (ammo).
The lower Mana capacity helps create an interesting dynamic as starting and maintaining a Hot-Streak is easier, but will also require players to pick up the next Chaos Crystal faster.
This makes the Chain Lightning more desirable for novice players, who might struggle to deal with multiple enemies.
Contrary, experienced players are more likely to want to use Magic Types that allow them to delay increasing their Exorcism Meter as long as possible.
Out of Mana
Players were initially frustrated when running out of mana (ammo), as they were unable to actively engage with enemies.
To combat this, players out of mana receive a very weak Magic Type with endless mana. The intention here was to provide players with the opportunity to finish off an enemy after running out. The infinite mana gets balanced through its overall weak attributes.
Looking back, I would add an execution functionality, hidden from the player, to this weapon to create a more memorable highlight for players.
While not relevant to the core experience, this is worth mentioning as it provides an example of improving the game with functionality outside the core loop.
Spawning System
The intentions behind the spawning system were to support the difficulty increase during a run, while also ensuring a constant stream of enemies.
The Exorcism Meter determines at specific cut-off points, what enemy types are spawned and at what probability.
Paladins and Priests are spawned in the early-mid game, while Archangels are added during the later game.
Furthermore, it creates the pacing of the game through spawn rate and maximum enemies alive.
Spawn rates are increased when there is less than a minimum number of enemies alive.
Spawn locations are predetermined and will be inactive if a player is nearby. This was done, to prevent enemies from spawning too close to the player, potentially instantly damaging them.
The Spawning System essentially helps create the player experience of being “stressful” and having “short runs” through pacing.
Enemies
The game includes 7 weapons of which 6 of them are modified and rebalanced versions of weapons provided in the base project.
I will not go over the modified weapons in detail, but will briefly mention one of them and give detailed information about the other one.
Paladin
The Paladin is an enemy with low health and low damage.
It moves to the closest player, before standing still and attacking with its sword.
The Paladin is intentionally simple and easy to deal with isolated.
It serves almost as a walking target dummy for the player to regain health.
However, this enemy is a threat to the player at close range, making them nearly obstacles that the player either needs to destroy or circumvent. In combination with the enclosed space the player finds themselves in, as well as Chaos Crystals being spawned at random locations creates interesting movement and target prioritization dynamics.
Priest
The Priest is a high-priority target, with moderate health.
It wanders randomly around before starting a ritual to exorcise the player, increasing their Exorcism Meter.
The Priests is the highest priority target in the game and needs to quickly be dealt with, as it increases the Exorcism Meter.
This supports achieving the “stressful” player experience.
In combination with spawn location, level layout, and other enemy types chasing the player, the randomized roaming behavior of a high-priority target helps drive the player experience further as it creates a more complex dynamic of moment-to-moment enemy prioritization and positioning.
This becomes more so relevant as movement is the only defensive approach against enemies.
The reason for their attack to be a delayed increase of the Exorcism Meter is so that players are given enough time to react to it while ensuring higher priority as it negatively affects the two most important resources to manage: Exorcism and through that Health loss.
Archangel
The Archangel is a strong enemy with high health and moderate damage.
It approaches the player before attacking. After their first attack, they block damage with their shield for a short period before chasing and attacking the player again. After the second attack, Archangels run away to restore health.
Archangels are introduced during the later phases of a run and intend to provide a challenge to the player.
Their action loop forces the player to kill them within a limited time frame (as they restore their own health), while also forcing the player to switch targets once their shield is raised, as otherwise their life might run out at this stage of the game.
In combination with the Priest Enemy type, this creates a small prioritization loop, with many moment-to-moment decisions, which leads to combat dynamics with more depth.
This further drives the player experience of being “stressful”.