Elite Brain Harvester Zombie

A Vampire Survivors inspired game for Ludum Dare 52. Visuals, music, sounds - all by me. :D

Full Unity project available at: https://github.com/pulni4kiya/LD52-2023.1-Harvest

Game jam theme

Harvest

Game idea

You're an elite zombie (which is why you can use weapons) that harvests human brains!!! (Nothing too deep, yeah. :D )

Behind the scenes

I had some time constraints for this game jam, so I decided to go for Ludum Dare's COMPO format for the first time, as it fit my schedule reasonably well. (It's 2 days instead of 3, solo, all assets from scratch.)

Initially I had 3 ideas:

Idea 1: You harvest flowers, then you make a flower shop and do flower arrangements, and finally you make a chain of flower shops and "manage" them.

Idea 2: You harvest souls (you're the Grim Reaper or something), but the souls are in different moods / states, and depending on what you harvest, it affects the mood of the game. It's more of an experience than an actual game.

Idea 3: Clone Vampire Survivors and troll around.

Obvious choice was obvious. :D

After picking the idea, I made a plan of what features I need and gave them some estimates (screenshot of it at the bottom), and started executing! First time I'm doing such a plan, and I gotta say, it went pretty well! Am definitely doing it again next time!

My role

Game design: I just copied stuff from other games this time. :D

Programming: I made cool stats and upgrades systems! Basically, I can add every string as a stat and assign some float number to it. And the upgrades can upgrade any stat by any number, and have a max level. Simple but efficient. All code and gameplay was done in about 10 hours. Imagine if I could've focused only on these things!!!

Visuals: I did the vector art in InkScape. Had no idea what I was doing, and also what is this thing called "consistency"? Never heard of it. Unless we talk about programming. Then it's a critical thing. :D

Sounds and music: I thought it was finally time to do something music and sound related... but realized I don't know anything about it, so I just started making random sounds and picked the best.