Brawlmart
Developed with Unreal Engine 4
Brawlmart is a local mutliplayer party game where you play as cute animals in a grocery store trying to get the items on your list before your opponents do, while causing mayhem with the special items throughout the store
Gameplay Loop
Players are tasked with acquiring their items from their grocery list to win the game. They compete against each other to get all of their items first or to have the most from their list cashed out before time runs out. Players can place them into their cart to take to the cash registers or choose to throw them at their opponents. There are several types of items, each with their own special status effects that can be inflicted on players to inhibit their progress. The player who wins 3 rounds, by fully cashing out their list or having the most items cashed out by the end of a round, wins the match.
Procedural Generation
We wanted the game to feel dynamic every time you played it, so we had many components be randomly generated. The level is procedurally generated with a tile system, so we created some preset sections of the map that had different types of shelves, could be placed in different areas, and in different orientations. The grocery lists were randomly generated from a list of all the items in the game, and we ensured that a single player would not have a duplicate on their list. The items were categorized by which section they could be in and were placed on the appropriate shelves in random positions.
Capstone Project
While attending the Toronto Film School, myself alongside several talented students collaborated on this capstone project. As the lead game designer for the programmers, I was successful in filling the leadership role to guide us students to a product we were all so proud of creating. So proud in fact, that we will continue to work on the project to add more features and eventually make it commercially available.
My Contributions
As one of the lead game designers I had a significant part in the pre-production and planning of the game. A lot of the mechanics and systems involved went through myself for approval. As a programmer, I got us started with the character controls, multiplayer setup, and camera work. As a lead, I collaborated with a lot of the major players in the development of this game, which meant having a hand in a lot of the mechanics and programming. My primary contributions were the throw mechanics, the inventory system, the cash register, and the scoring system, including the UI for each them. I supported my colleagues regarding the cart mechanics, the status effects of the items, and other game systems. In addition to all of that, I also managed the version control of the game using GitHub for our repository, handling merges and conflicts.
