Akimbo Corps

Game Design / Development Project

Project Overview

Role: Gameplay Designer/Developer, UI Designer
Collaborators:
Tools Used:
Duration: 48 Hours (July 7th 2023 - July 9th 2023)

Project Screenshots

Project Description

Akimbo Corps is a game created for the 2023 GMTK Jam under the theme of "Roles Reversed", where myself and a group of developers from SFU's Game Dev Club decided to attempt an approach to an anti-stealth game. The game went on to place in the top 25% of over 6,000 submissions.

In Akimbo Corps, the player is responsible guarding a series of gang safehouses from maniacal, mass-murdering Supercops. Up to six different types of units with limited vision cones can be placed in order to prevent the four Supercops from reaching their destinations.

My main responsibilities within this project were to design and implement player units and enemies, in addition to creating the main UI elements used throughout the game. My goals for this project were to depart from my usual comfort zone of 2D pixel games and delve into 3D, in addition to designing more complex systems.

Gameplay Design

Designing Units and Enemies

Designing units for Akimbo Corps was challenging because we knew going into the design phase that we would be severly limited by the short amount of time we had, mainly due to the amount of work already required for other gameplay systems. As a result, our main focus was on creating a cast of units that all controled space in different ways under the same parameters, in order to simplify development work down the line.

In order to streamline the design process between multiple designers, a spreadsheet with parameters we expected to implement was introduced early on in order to better define each unit's gameplay identity, and to help us balance gameplay to the best of our ability. This also served to help us prioritize designs based on a large variety of factors, such as feasibility, gameplay impact, and more.

Design spreadsheet for Akimbo Corps showing unit designs with different parameters and properties.
Design spreadsheet for Akimbo Corps showing unit designs with different parameters and properties.

Player Units

From the design spreadsheet, I was able to quickly implement units and make adjustments as needed, thanks to Evan's speedy programming. I began by making a sample prefab of Mickey Mook, which then served as a base for other units to be built on top of. Prefabbing the units this way allowed them to be created as seperate instances of objects for unit placement.

Development screenshot showing the Unit Base prefab.
Development screenshot showing the Unit Base prefab.

Enemy Pathing AI

One of my main contributions during developement was the implementation of automatic pathing for enemy units. The pathing system utilizes a NavMesh package that determines the walkable surfaces within the level's layout, with pre-defined checkpoints that the enemy has to pass through in order to increment through the list of checkpoints for that given level.

Demo video showing early gameplay, namely unit placement, fog of war, enemy pathing, and implemented UI.

UI Design

As Hotline Miami was one of our main inspirations for this game, I wanted to utilize similarly bright colors, whilst emulating the brand of humor we were aiming for through taking inspiration from 80s VHS Displays. The main goal of the UI was to be simple yet clear, since we knew that a short game of this scope would likely not have a fully drawn-out tutorial sequence.

Another point of consideration was that the UI had to also cohesive with the game's narrative. This led to the decision to utilize a file with profile images for unit selection, as the player was essentially acting as a manager or boss to these lackeys in defense of their homes of operation.

Takeaways

Through this project, I was able to push myself out of my comfort zone when it came to game design, exploring new territory with mechanics such as fog of war, AI pathing and in-depth AI targeting / shooting, among many others. I was also able to bring in better organizational skills and frameworks to streamline the development process for this project, despite a heavily reduced scope due to the time constraints of a game jam.

Overall, I belive this project helped me discover many new tools that I can use in my game design arsenal, as well as further refining the processes and skills I already had.