Speechless​
Platform: PC
Genre: Interactive
Engine: Unity (C#)
Duration: 48h (Global Game Jam - Birmingham)
Year: 2019
Role: Programmer
Most of us didn't know each other before the Global Game Jam but especially now after it's over I couldn't have hoped for better people to work with. We are all 2nd or 3rd year Games students, 5 programmers and 1 designer. The theme for this years GGJ was "what home means to you" and for that, we made Speechless. In Speechless you defend your house from lost souls who are trying to steal the words that mean home to you. To stop them, you give them something that might feel like home to them, letting them finally rest in peace. This is a twin-stick shooter style. WASD to move the player, move the mouse to aim where to shoot. There are two attacks, primary (left click) and secondary (right click).
Link to the GGJ page of the game: https://globalgamejam.org/2019/games/speechless
My work
During this project, I took on the challenge of the AI Enemies that we have in the game. As I had never worked with AI or Enemy behaviour before for me this was an amazing experience to learn more about this area and realize how much I enjoy it. In this game, the enemies can spawn from 4 different parts of the map (top, bottom, left and right) and within those parts, they spawn randomly. If they haven't stolen a word yet, they will always chase the closest word, whether that's being held by the player, on the floor or inside the house (it won't chase another enemy that's already holding the word). If they are holding a word, they will always try to run away to the closest spawn area and once they do, they will have successfully stolen the word.
I am pretty happy with how their behaviour ended up looking like considering I had 48 hours to work on it. After the GGJ we have continued development and I've been focusing on other areas like player feedback that are more important at this stage.