Tre's Blog

War for the Underworld was a game started as a Game jam submission, with my brother. Unfortunately, he was busy during the time of development so the work was done by me. He did make a level with my codebase, gave the project it’s name, and uploaded the submission on itch.io, but I wasn’t exactly the happiest with it and decided to at least give it a few more features to call it a bit more of a complete project. Stuff like a health bar, multiple levels support, respawning enemies. These were all things done by the original games on NES by Konami, so it’d feel odd to be missing it in a demo of developer skill.

Gameplay wise it’s a simple “run right and attack enemies” game. Again this is to replicate the classic CastleVania style a bit. You also have a special attack where you can throw an axe, which requires power that you get by picking up hearts. You can find hearts by hitting the torches, akin to the candles of classic CastleVania. Some torches also have a score item on them instead of hearts, since scores used to be a big thing, back when Nintendo Power would have high score tables. In the same vein you can also find hidden food in one of the walls, using the same code as the torches with a different setting.

Story wise the game was supposed to have some story about lords or whatever, and then it was also supposed to have multiple characters and other things. But there was also only one week to make something, and cuts obviously happen, especially when I don’t have the whole week to make it (I still have College, after all!). For sounds and graphics, I found all public domain art (and sounds) posted on a site called opengameart.org. The tiles were all set up properly using Unity’s built in tilemap system, and audio handled by the audio system. Animations are a bit flawed still, due to time constraint but are obviously implemented. This honestly helped me learn a lot about the more complicated bits of Unity’s animation system, but I might just follow a tutorial next time as figuring everything out was a bit of a mess. Also using the tiles system inspired me to use it in the project I did next, the farming demo, by directly modifying Tiles in code unlike what I did in Susminer by making my own tile map using code and no interfaces.

Enemies and AI design was another area I got some more experience in. Pictured were some zombie enemies that had broke in the build I uploaded somehow but should’ve just chased the player. Other than them, I had a highly complicated Knight that had it’s shield up until it attacked, at which point it’d be vulnerable and laggy. I also made it so it’d try to run back if you got to close, and it’d refuse to attack if you did. There were also two types of bats I designed, one to go in a line, up and down, indefinitely. The other was designed to wander and divebomb the player really quickly, in implementation it’s super fast so you have to anticipate it. It’s also rare for it to attack since it can fly anywhere and it’s aggro range is small. There was also a slime that just jumps aggressively towards the player when they’re close, or randomly when they aren’t. You can always hear their sound since enemies play sounds directly to the player, which was a quick hack I made to get things going faster. Less parts, less errors, or at least I try to believe.

Overall, this was a project I did for fun but it didn’t become my favorite. I finished it and it’s great to say that when I have so many unfinished projects sitting around for one reason or another. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to finish up my work on Susminer, even though that project’s gone through too many changes through it’s life to count. And hopefully I can get working on some more projects I want to try, like a Bluetooth NES controller setup, a completely procedurally generated version of Phasmophobia, or Pokémon, or even a Minigolf game.