Developing Mini-games for "Before Heaven"

• Background

This project was done by Ryan Santos A-Term 2014 for V.J. Manzo as part of a Humanities Practicum requirement.

• Project Description

For this project I created three mini-games for V.J. Manzo for possible use in his "Before Heaven" game in production. That idea is that I would make these simple mini-games and they could be modified and implemented later in Manzo’s game. Because of this, I kept the game as general as possible, mainly focusing on functionality and mechanics rather than cosmetics, since the art may very well change with its implementation. The three games I made were called Scroll Attack, Music Tuner, and Drum Hero.

In Scroll Attack, the player is located on the left side of the screen and must defend against enemies that are coming from the right side of the screen. Each enemy will spawn in a random location and move towards the player. Each enemy is also assigned a note combination that the player must play in order to defeat the enemy. The player will use the 1-8 number keys to play these notes (the enemies will have text below them telling the player which notes need to still be played). The player must then hit these numbers in the correct order to defeat the enemy. In addition, there is a metronome playing in the background and the player must hit these notes in time with the tempo. If the player hits a wrong note or plays out of time, then the player is stunned for a short time. The game will continue and the enemies will keep spawning and moving towards the player. After certain intervals, the tempo will pick up and more enemies will start spawning. The game continues until an enemy hits the left side of the screen past the player, then the game is over. The player gets a point for every enemy he defeats, and minus five points for each missed note. The player can then keep playing the game to try to beat their high score.

In Music Tuner the player is presented with an un-tuned guitar, and must tune it to a standard guitar tuning. Each tuning knob on the guitar will have a number on it (1-6) and that corresponds to the number key that the player can press to hear that note. At the start of the game, all of the strings will be out of tune and the player can press the number keys to hear the string. The player can then hold down a number and press the up or down arrow keys to tune that string upwards or downwards. When the string is the correct note, then the number will turn green to indicate that you got it right. When all of the strings are green, then you win! The player starts the game with 100 points and every few seconds it decrements by one and every time you tune up or down a string it decrements again. So in order to get the best score you must be quick to tune, and also must tune the guitar in as few moves as possible. The player can replay as many times as they want to try to beat any high scores.

In Drum Hero the player must use the number keys to play drum notes. There are two modes to this mini-game, Freestyle and Score mode. In Score Mode, the user must play the correct drum notes as they move down the screen into the play area. This concept is pretty similar to guitar hero, where there are 8 “lanes” where notes can drop down to and the play must hit the right note as it enters the play area. Each lane is number 1-8 and the player can play that note by hitting the corresponding number key. The number each play a different drum note. For example, there is snare, hi-hat, kick, crash, and so on. Notes are randomized and will move down the screen at a constant speed (the programmer can change this speed as needed). Notes will continue to drop and they player must continue to hit them. The player gets one point for hitting a note correctly, and minus five points for missing. After ten missed notes, the game ends. In freestyle mode, the user can just use the number keys to play their own drum patterns and fills as much as they want.

Overall, these games present a proof of concept and prototype of each idea, and can be easily modified for any purpose in the future. The project was fun and I enjoy working with Unity and music. In the future I hope to do more work like this, preferably more with MIDI files.

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