S L E D G E
A Vertical Slice made for UCSC's Game Design Studio course
SLEDGE ShortPlay Video.mp4What is SLEDGE?
SLEDGE is a first-person action platformer where you take an explosive sledgehammer to the skies to pulverize the machines that killed the gods and usurped the heavens. Use your parkour skills and hammer-swinging expertise to traverse ruined divine landscapes and defeat autonomous adversaries as fast as you possibly can.
Play Our Game!
Download our windows build here! Simply unzip our project folder and run the SLEDGE.exe executable.
Prototyping SLEDGE
Early Build Experiments
We experimented with some of Unity's platform options, to see what would be the most efficient in terms of storage space
We tried out Windows vs. WebGL builds, and file compression
We found that WebGL builds save significant amounts of storage, but ended up not needing to use one as our Windows builds managed to stay under our storage goals without the need of hosting a web page
Gameplay Trials
When implementing our core movement and hammer launching, we spent a lot of time fine tuning things like air control, acceleration, and launch velocity
We tried to strike a fine balance between movement that feels tight, while still feeling the significant impact of the launch of the hammer
Asset Archives
To help store things like assets and notes internally, we tried using the organizing app Notion
Notion ended up being very useful, especially for storing art concepts and models for later reference in a way that was easy to parse
External Constraints
Accessibility
Our game does not use color as significant distinguishers beyond bright/dark monochromes, making our game compatible for those with limited vision
We support a one-handed control scheme, allowing the player to reasonably play with just the mouse as long as they have a supported 5-button mouse with Forward and Back buttons
Our audio is completely supplemental, featuring music and sound effects, supporting players who may be hearing impaired
Our short-level structure and frequent moments of rest without enemies allow the player to easily reach a natural resting point within two minutes of play
Localization
We fully support English and Japanese languages in our game.
Localization settings are readily accessible in our main menu and allow the player to play the game in either language, as all UI text is seamlessly translated.
Game Format
Our game is an offline digital experience, meaning it satisfies the following requirements:
Our build is 43.2 MB, which is below our 100 MiB storage requirement
The game is entirely completable while disconnected from the internet; There are no features of the game that require a network connect
Our current build is fully supported on desktop using Windows
Our Team + Their Contributions
Anthony Mollé: Our Game Director, the lead organizer with the vision and designing/engineering the core player mechanics of our game, including our polished movement, combat, and levels
Dominic Fanaris: Producer and Technical Designer in charge of guiding meetings, taking notes, and helping out with implementation of enemies, UI, and more.
Evan Pompa: Gameplay Engineer and Level Designer working in close collaboration with our director on levels, movement, and combat.
Jonah Ryan: Technical Designer responsible for our UI, Enemy, and sound implementation.
Joshua Vaillancourt: SFX Engineer producing and implementing the various sound effects in our game.
Kat Pe Benito: Concept Artist + Localization Engineer, producing weapon concepts, implementing our localization system, and adding Japanese language support to our game in the form of translations.
Mike McInnes: Environment Artist, creating concepts for our world and regions, and producing the 3D models and textures that decorate our levels.
Attie Sit: 3D Artist, responsible for modeling and texturing our player weapon, enemies, and more.
Kaelen Cook: Concept Artist + Animator, creating concepts for the enemies we faced and animations for the player's attacks.
Enrico Widodo: Composer responsible for creating the two soundtracks + variants present in the game.