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Frikin the Laser Shark
This is my capstone project I work on for four months with 6 other team members. Cory Mcfarland, James Marshall Parker, Jonathan Parrott, Chelsey Sansonetti, Ryan Stocker, Josh Wehking, and myself are the team that worked on this project. We also had a producer who was a graduate student in game design in Scottie Newman. This project was a large undertaking as it was the first time the team and myself designed a full fledged game in Unity.
Full game download on Dropbox
The game is a 2D underwater bullet-hell game. The player takes on the role of Frikin, a shark with a laser attached to his head. Using the laser to destroy enemies, the player must traverse the worlds defeating the minions of the dreaded Frakin, a shark with a flamethrower attacked to his belly. The player has multiple laser weapons at their disposal as well as a dash that they can move through projectiles without taking damage. They must traverse the world to defeat that world's boss. After the player completes the first 3 worlds, composing of 2 levels and a boss fight, the player will be faced with the final and most difficult world. They must take everything they learned to make it to Frakin's room to defeat him in one on one laser/flamethrower combat in the final climatic battle.
Showcase Trailer
My Role
My role on the team was the lead level designer as well as enemy design. I worked to create levels in the campaign that scaled up in difficulty as well as forced the player to pay attention to their surrounding or they would be killed easily. I also worked on setting up the user interface in the pause menu and the main menu screens. These were setting up the entire game from the opening screen to get the player into the theme of the game. I worked on setting up the death scene animation to make dying in the game fun or at least, make the player laugh with the goofy animations. A good portion of the art in the game for enemies or hazards are done by me. Some quick art drawings to show the player what the enemy or hazard represents. Since we did not have a dedicated artist on the project,we got an artist to do some of the bosses and the player character, I stepped up and took a role in the art department.
Level Design
Below is a sample of the levels I worked on that made it into the game. Each of these levels introduce a new enemy or mechanic that changes how the player will have to play. In 1-2, the player is introduced to the octopus enemy which throws projectiles in all directions. In 4-2, the player is chased by the Big Bertha. A massive projectile that fills the screen and is an instant kill if the player comes in contact with its projectile. Enemies and environmental hazards are introduced at a throttled rate to make sure not to overwhelm the player.
World 1-2
Enemy Design
Below is a sample of the enemies I designed for our game.
Buff Muscle Image 1:
Starting state before he throws his anchors.
UI Elements
Below is some of the UI elements I created for the game.
Death Scene
The death scene was a lot of fun to create. It created the animations that were fun to make as well as fun for the team to watch. The idea to bring humor into the death scene is to make player death fun or at least less painful.
Post Mortem Video
The Future of Frakin
The team is currently underway with new updates and new additions to the game to give it a full release on Steam. We are going to revamp the main menu and have a hub screen to incorporate level select as well as other functions. We plan on adding more worlds and bosses to the campaign to have a total of 8 worlds each with 3 levels and a world boss. We are also working on having an Endless Ocean mode which is a procedural generated world that is laid out in front of the player that is broken up by mini bosses. These mini bosses will break up the level to give the player a new challenge. After the player finishes the run they will be rewarded with currency that will be used to unlock determinant upgrades to the player such as slightly more ammo capacity or a bank system that will allow the player to store one item they found on their previous run to use in a future run. This game mode will have much more replay-ability than the campaign but we are dedicated to giving the player a full experience within the campaign as well as the Endless Ocean mode.
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