Tales From The Blasterverse

A Twin stick shooter where players focus on building an arsenal of guns

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My Role

I was added to the Bullet Mullet Team halfway through the development of this project. So over the course of my time on the project I began to take over the design of the weapons, making a modular design balanced and interesting despite nearly 400 guns combinations in game. Creating new effects for the gun to have such as exploding upon finding their target or forms of area denial be it damage or a slowing effect. Additionally balancing the combination of these abilities against the enemies themselves.

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  • Modular Design

  • Team Intergration

  • Scope

  • Working Solo on a single part of the game

This would look MUCH more impressive if each element had their own unique gun part

This would look MUCH more impressive if each element had their own unique gun part

Weapons Engineering

My overall goal when joining Bullet Mullet was to make the game more interesting and adding more depth to the systems. In service of doing so I modified some of the gun types to be more engaging to the player. For example, I took the beam rifle which did a base damage over time to one that would ramp up in damage the longer it was hitting enemies.

In an effort to balance the game I standardized weapon damage so that the only thing separating two auto pistols apart are the effect(s) they’re equipped with. This will help keep all the possible weapon combinations in check.

Effects

There were also a variety of effects that I added to the game which many players were coming to the game to experience. To do so I added new effects for the player to use against their enemies. Including:

Physical - a base damage increase
Demo - a huge explosion damaging all enemies nearby
Lava - a damage over time effect on any enemies within its area
Electricity - much like lava this is a damage over time however this follows the enemy it hits
Fire - a damage over time on a single target
Atomic - a damage over time effect that stacks on a target each time it is hit
Hack - causing the enemy hit to turn on their allies for a brief period of time

All of these effects along with the ones already in game encourage the player to come back, to try new combinations and feel their power grow throughout the game. This also allowed the design team and I to avoid the scaling enemies and damage which I saw as an unneeded burden. An added benefit of this is that someone who’s already beaten the game can still join a new player’s game and both players should still be able to have fun and feel powerful. The veteran can show off the effects they have while not being so strong that the new player would feel useless. Potentially the veteran could even still see a bit of challenge in the game because of this, despite being so far past the first mission.

The Other Members of Bullet Mullet:

David M - Lead Producer
Austen London - Producer

Thomas McGillicuddy - Lead Programmer
Nils Steinbuegl - Programmer
Zac Taylor- Programmer

Amanda Gates - Lead Designer
Calvin Johns - Level Designer
Harrison Lindner - UI/UX Designer
Maxwell Johnson - Audio Designer

Micheal Armstrong - Lead Artist
Raili Piscusa - Artist
Matthew Dismuke - Artist
Thomas Ray - Artist