Astral Clash

Summary: Astral Clash is a 2D multiplayer focused fighting game, with elements of platforming. Using games like Super Smash Brothers, Towerfall, and Powerstone as inspiration, Astral Clash has the player fight as 4 different representations of astrological signs in 4 different battlefields with a total of 4 players. The game was built to be more friendly to new players than a game like Smash Brothers, but with the mechanical depth and variety of actions associated with that series, as you can block, dodge, use light, medium, and heavy moves unique to each character, and use a special, arena covering attack after gathering 3 stars that spawn at random in the arena.

My Role: I was the lead programmer and a designer on this project, as my role changed with the needs of the team. Personally, I was responsible for:

• Designing, implementing, and balancing movesets and statistics for each of the 4 characters
• Level creation for the game's 4 levels
• Implementation of win and loss mechanics, such as options for number of lives, number of rounds, and health systems
• Design and implementation of UI for health, resources, out of view objects, and menu systems
• Implementation and balancing of character super moves as well as the spawn of the resource used for those moves
• Implementation of animation state machines, including balancing hitbox sizes and animation speeds
• Creation of all visual effects, particularly particle systems present for level dressing, on-hit visuals such as screen shake and animation pausing, and visuals for special move activation
• Implementation of multiplayer support for up to 4 players, with palette swaps for players picking the same character

Post Mortem: As a student project, this one was a real challenge: No one knew the skillsets of other people on the team going in, and roles and tasks had to be adjusted on the fly. It proved to be a project management puzzle, as initially the game was scoped for the full team of 12, but about half the workers had virtually no experience, and had to be taught on the fly. Ultimately, it was definitely my most challenging project, but also one of the most rewarding, as it forced me into a position where I had to learn a lot of skills I needed to complete the game, and I rose to the challenge to create a really fun game with a team I ended up being great friends with. This project is most responsible for teaching me the importance of triage lists in regard to scope, and also taught me a lot about balancing for a fighting game, as I adjusted animation frames, hitboxes, stunlock, damage, health, movement speed, and other metrics to achieve balanced gameplay. Often, the trick was in knowing what metric to adjust a character on, in order to make sure they were still fun to play and true to the core of their design.