DeadBeat | Devpost

Custom Tile Map for the Game
Custom (unused) Tree 1
Custom (unused) Drippy Tree
Custom (unused) Dead Tree
Custom (unused) Mushroom
Custom (unused) Tree 2
Initial Tile Set (credit artist Cluly)
Recolored Tile Set
Title Sequence 2
Title Sequence 1

Inspiration

We were inspired by Darkwood and Rhythm Doctor. Both games create fun and interesting mechanics in their respective genres. We wanted to combine both of their mechanics to create a unique take on horror and rhythm games. Alongside this, it takes inspiration from the original 8-bit textures from previous Pokemon games that were played on the GameBoy, GameBoy Color, Gameboy Advanced, etc.

What it does

The game begins with a nameless character finding themselves in the middle of the forest with only a flashlight. Emulating an almost "you-can-only-look-forward" gameplay, where the player can only see parts of the map that the flashlight illuminates. It uses a fidget mechanism where the heartbeat of the character simulates a metronome and in instances where the character encounters an interaction, whether it's just from a sudden noise, an actual entity, etc. the heartbeat increases and follows the rhythm of a classical piece in a minor key (to maintain a melancholy vibe) and the player must tap their space bar following that rhythm. For every note missed, the player increases the chances of an encounter with an actual entity.

How we built it

The game engine we used was Unity. We utilized tile mapping applications like Tiled and add-ons to translate the data between the game engine and the textures. The coding language used was C#.

Challenges we ran into

The scope of the project and creating the textures was the initial roadblock faced. Creating textures meant a more customizable map for the game, however, we encountered issues when it came to scaling the textures within the tile map creator and it worsened when transferring the scaled down textures into the Unity engine as they were so compressed that they lost detail. The idea of the mechanics and gameplay of a rhythm horror game also came with their roadblocks. We found it was at times over-ambitious to achieve many of the planned mechanics in 36 hours but we aimed to have as best of a representation of our idea as possible. Entity spawning, animations, and rhythm mechanics became unexpected obstacles.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We genuinely felt accomplished working with Unity as 3/4 of the team members have never worked with it before. Moreover, all of us had little to no experience working with C# and having this experience under our belt with a new programming language was worthwile. The overall game development experience was very fulfilling as we were able to experience your typical brainstorming to design process to developing the software to testing stages.

What we learned

Being stubborn when it came to being original with the work and not using premade templates made it difficult to put our full focus on the software aspect because of time constraints. We definitely should've taken more breaks because as the adrenaline of staying up late wore off, our energies got low, and our work ethic worsened.

What's next for DeadBeat

Hopefully, a fully functional rhythm game aspect with multiple keybinds used and a larger map to up the intensity of the horror aspect as well. We also would like to implement better entity and event spawning.