Genre: Single player, 3D platformer/obby, Bio Feedback
Software used: Unreal engine 5, Arduino IDE, Miro
Referenced games: Doritos crash course, total wipe out, Nevermind
Game play: This was my uni project where I took players live bio feedback data via pulse rate and have it affected different aspects of the obstacle course changing not only how mechanics work but changing the environment also.
Why I made this
Pulse related games despite being done loads of time in projects they mostly relate to horror which I wanted to try a different genre that can uses different emotions.
This can make for a very fun and unique difficulty setting so instead of it being set it's all based on player emotion.
Main issue
There was one major issue when making this and that's despite I can get data through into unreal, the sensors I got only worked for the first 4 beats then stop.
Solution? I had to tap the sensor to simulate a BPM beat which works as well, this helps simulates a beat instead by changing how fast it gets tapped.
Pulse sensor --> Arduino ----> Unreal ----> into mechanics
MechanicsÂ
The rotators basic use is they would rotate around trying to knock the player off.
How the players pulse affects this is depending on the difficulty setting it will change speed and direction they can go at.
Pushers will continually come in and out of the wall and when it hits the player it would push them off the ledge
Instead of it changing how it affects the movement it has an activation and deactivation switch.
If the difficulty is low, then only some will be moving but when the difficulty rise and more will become active. At any point the difficulty goes down the pusher will stop in place.
Spinners will require the player to walk on them walking against the rotation to make it through trying not to get pushed off.
Instead of the difficulty setting changing the speed it would be the players PBM rating that is the speed on a 1:1 scale
(BPM 97 = Rotation speed = 97)
The big re... I mean jump pads is so the player will have to bounce from pad to pad and make it across to the end.
How the pulse affects these is by depending on difficulty it affects how strong the jump will be meaning they will go higher.
What makes this a challenge is by not how high they can go but also air control as well when going max hight
To give a bit of emotion I added a pulsating UI element which the higher it gets the boulder and more noticeable the boarder becomes
This is not only for visual affect it's meant to represent a heartbeat which is sometimes use in games if players get or run low on stamina.
Another part to make this more immersive was the change of audio by having crowd cheering louder and heart beat becoming faster/ noticeable.
Crowd cheering was inspired by when the more the pressure gets higher sounds will become more louder the outside sounds become.
Heart beat is another part of when pressue gets high the more sounds become, reason why I chose this is hearing a heart beat is another aspect that can become more noticable when understress or hyped up.