Alexander Bönicke
Lead Level Designer - Game Designer
Proof of Concept: 2D Bullet-Hell


Platform:
PC
Duration:
1 week
Tools:
Unity3D
Roles:
Game Mechanics & Prototyping
Programming
Overview
With this unnamed project I set out to explore a concept for a bullet-hell style game and to learn more about c# programming and custom inspector scripts in Unity3D.

Research & Prototyping
The main spin on the bullet-hell genre is to restrain the player character's combat abilities to close-range, while the environment can still utilize ranged weapons. I spent a lot of time researching projectile-patterns to get a feeling for pacing and difficulty of this set up.
One of the primary questions to answer here is: How to create an experience that feels fair (and fun) while the player character is at such a disadvantage.
A lot of thought also went into the implementation of a central, modular weapon system to allow for simple and complex bullet-patterns likewise.


Workflow Design: Level Editor
To lay out an easy workflow for Level Design I created a 2D level editor. In this process I taught myself to create custom Inspector functionality in Unity3D.
The level editor is not only limited to this project. I made sure to design flexible functionality that can be used for other sprite-based 2D games as well. Additionally, as I deem user engagement very valuable, I laid the foundation for User Generated Content by adding abstract import/export systems.