About
Outrager is a prototype commissioned by thumbfood. Outrager is a pick-up-and-play, arcade action into-the-screen shooter in a classic 80’s style, set in a ‘pixelated’ game world.
Responsibility
I was commissioned by thumbfood, for a two month period, to work with them to develop a prototype of Outrager. Using 3D assets from the Unity asset store, I was tasked with developing the game mechanics and creating a vertical slice. The prototype has been used to pitch for funding from government supported funding organisations and publishers.
The main game mechanics developed for this prototype were:
Player control — making the car move into the screen, and be able to change lanes, with the option to fire at on coming enemies. It was very important to thumbfood that the game work with both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 controllers, in addition to the keyboard controls, this was achieved by using the InControl plugin.
Enemy AI - develop enemies that would detect, chase and shoot at the player.
Health — develop a simple health system, allowing any object to have health and be destroyed when the health runs out.
Scoring/ Timer — the prototype required a race timer, as well as a simple scoring system which rewards the player upon damaging and killing the enemies, along with some objects.
Voxels — a major part of the design for the game is the aesthetic, the use of voxels to create a cubed world and have lots of cool cubed explosions. All the vehicles in the prototype are created by voxels, and when shot deform leaving a hole where the rocket hit. Any death explosion creates a cloud of voxels allowing the player to pass through the “smoke” of their enemies, the explosions were created using Unity’s built in particle system.
Multiplatform — Outrager is planned as a console game, however this prototype was built for PC/ Mac (with controller support). An iOS build was also developed as a feasibility test.
Below are some screenshots from the prototype.
