Ratslayer was developed under Toxiquil, a team run by Alan Salamm and myself. Development started in July 2023 and the game was published on Itch.io and the Google Play Store in August 2024. The game features a variety of weapons, abilities, upgrades, and enemy types. Ratslayer is currently a finalist in the GDWC 2024 Winter Season Game Development Championship for the "Best Hobby Game" category!
Gameplay Programming
I was in charge of designing and programming the gameplay in Ratslayer. This involved the gameplay loop, enemy AI, abilities, upgrades, weapons, controls, level design, and overall balance of the game. I would start with hand-drawn concept art before moving onto programming and balance tweaking.
A challenge we faced during Ratslayer's development was retaining difficulty and pressure as the player gets stronger. I was able to find a nice balance between difficulty and player strength by iterating on the enemy spawner and enemy AI.
For the enemy spawner, we took inspiration from games like Vampire Survivors and Call of Duty's Zombies mode, where the enemies get faster and tougher to kill as time passes. During playtesting, we noticed that players were simply walking away from the enemies because they moved slower than the player. To remedy this, we had enemies immediately respawn when they are too far from the player. This also helped maintain a set number of enemies on screen at a given time, creating a greater sense of tension.
For the enemy AI, we needed to have the rats navigate around obstacles in their environment to prevent them from getting stuck. I researched different types of enemy navigation and settled on a steering system. Enemies cast a ray in 8 directions that look for any obstacles. If one of the rays detects an obstacle preventing them from reaching their target (the player,) it will navigate around the obstacle. We could also use this system to force enemies to spread out, rather than clumping together. Some enemies even have special behavior, like preferring to be in front of other enemies to protect them. This greatly improved the difficulty and strategy of game play. More information about AI Steering can be found here.
Animation, SFX and VFX
Animation was another responsibility of mine during Ratslayer's development. The player character's locomotion used pre-made animations from the Asset Store. I manually edited many of these animations to account for different weapon types. All of the rat animations - as well as the player character's idle animation on the main menu - were done by myself with Unity's animation tools.
All of the video effects used for Ratslayer were purchased from the Asset Store and modified to fit the game's art style. I was in charge of making these modifications and implementing them in-game.
I also handled the Audio Design for Ratslayer. This involved the creation of SFX from stock sounds purchased on the internet, adjusting audio levels, and implementing background music. Most of this was done using Audacity and Unity's built in audio tools.
Project Management and Publishing
At the start of the project, I created design documents, a development timeline, a budget, and a Discord for us to discuss our plans. I also gathered groups of playtesters and tracked feedback in a document shared by Alan and I. When it came time to publish the game on Google Play, I handled creating mobile builds and sending it to our mobile testers, as well as creating the game's store page with art assets created by Alan.
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