Statacus

Controls

• Left click to shoot (can be held)
• WASD / Arrow Keys to move
• Space to jump (kind of useless)

Overview

Statacus was built during the Video Game Development Club's 2016 winter game jam at UCI. The theme was "There's never enough", so we made an action RPG where there are never enough stat upgrade options. You start with the same 3 basic stats, but as you beat each level you unlock a new random stat. Beware as there are some troll stats that don't aid you at all in battle, and if you can make it through the gauntlet of levels 5-8 then you have a good chance of being able to beat the whole game.

My Contribution

I did most of the programming for the game as well as the particle systems. I also helped design the main stats and mechanics as it was my idea we ended up going with at the beginning of the jam.

What I Learned

It was my first time making a stat system and it was really fun thinking of all the stats and then integrating them into the gameplay calculations. Between the stats combined with the scaling waves of enemies I quickly learned how hard and complicated it was to balance these kind of games. I spent tons of time towards the end of the jam tweaking and changing the parameters for how many enemies each wave spawned and at what frequencies, and also with the stat scaling system, how much a stat should be upgraded when you spend a point in it? Things like that were very time intensive, but it was fun trying to balance it all and I feel we did a decent job with it. The game is able to be played and won using multiple different strategies.

Overall this game turned out to be very fun and we ended up winning the first prize!