Project: Meteora

A first person, roguelike-horde shooter

Project Breakdown

  • Solo - 6 weeks, halftime

  • Created in Unreal Engine 5

  • All scripts & systems are created by me

  • Assets used:

    • Blockout Tools plugin by Dimitry Karphukhin

    • Chaotic Skies by Velarion

    • Low Poly Nature by Vertex Rage Studio

    • Low Poly Sci-fi corridor by PolyArt3D

    • Sci-fi Weapon Pack by GrayBite Studio

Goals

  • To create an addictive gameplay loop with clear player progression and side objectives*

  • Creating replay value through roguelike elements, such as randomizing weapon spawn locations and a shop that randomizes items & stats

  • Making a visually pleasing low-poly environment with differing “biomes”

Summary

Meteora is a systemically heavy project, being a roguelike horde shooter, taking inspiration from the likes of Black Ops Zombies and the player upgrades found in Risk of Rain 2 items.

Set in a low-poly environment featuring a sci-fi lab along with a close by village that have fallen under the corporate terror of hostile robots that have gone rogue.

The focus of the project is primarily on scripting & system design, accomodated by an addicting gameplay loop, and built on a Figure-8 style level for good flow.

Noteworthy systems:

  • Economy

  • Upgradable stats

  • Unlockable weapons

  • Randomized shop system

  • Spawn algorithm & round based logic

  • Player controller & visual feedbacking

Software used

  • Unreal Engine 5.6

  • Miro

  • Krita

lEVEL OVERVIEW

Level Start

1

2

3

Split 1

Split 2 Start

4

5

6

7

8

9

Split 2

Split 3 Start

Cave route

Flying enemy Route

Mountain Arch Route

End

Level design

Pacing overview

Super early prototype of core mechanics

Later state

Gameplay systems

Game systems

prototyping

The name for the project, “Exceed”, actually came from a Devil May Cry mechanic where one of the protagonists can rev his sword like a motorcycle, and when fully charged would unleash a devastating attack.

The initial idea was to create that mechanic in a first person shooter, but ultimately couldn’t be balanced or feel good in combination with the rest of the players’ toolkit. The amply named “Exceed Shot” was a one shot and would penetrate all enemies that it collided with. The normal gunshot required 3 hits for a kill, but it just felt so redundant to use when the dash was also a one hit kill.

The player could also instantly reach the required amount of Exceed Revs, if they hit the Rev input 0.1 seconds after firing.

I decided to scrap the Exceed mechanic in favor of having a better feeling revolver, as well as better gameplay tempo and a more focused player arsenal. The name sounded cool though, so I kept that :)

Player mechanics

Besides the player mechanics available

Reflections

This project is absolutely my most iterative one to date. The end product is severely more focused than the initial vision, for the better. All from scrapped mechanics, to the visual style, to the level layout itself.

But if I were to create more levels for this toolbox of a project, I would make levels more memorable for a more focused experience.

What I mean by that is, have some levels that are higher tempo and demands more mechanical skill, and have others that demand more analytical skill and rewards the curiosity for finding skips in the level. I think the latter approach is very cool from a level design standpoint, but I also just found it so fun to go fast in this game that I wanted to make a level that could offer both experiences.

Working on Project: Exceed has been very humbling and very eye opening for me in terms of iterative work as well as what makes a game fun and digestible.

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Project Exceed