Marauder No. 9 | Sam Schlenker

Project Overview

Marauder No. 9 is a 2.5D shooter-platformer built in Unity and released on itch.io that I developed over the course of a semester with a group of students. In this game, you play as a high-tech bounty hunter armed to the teeth who is tasked with eliminating a spaceship full of deadly robots from the inside. This page showcases my contributions to the project and its progression from concept to completion.

Team Size: 5

Play the Game on itch.io

Major Contributions

System Design

Designed gameplay systems and worked with scriptors to create a framework for multiple systems

Gameplay Design

Designed and created concept sheets for gameplay mechanics and worked with scriptors to turn gameplay concepts into final mechanics

Visualization

Helped with the visualization and concepting phase of development including the environment references, and UI references

VFX

Implemented the explosion effects into the game using Unity's free effects suite

Player Animations

Implemented the player animations into the game using scripts and Unity's Player Animator

Gameplay mechanics

All of the core mechanics made it into the final demo, but they did not all make it in as originally planned. Some mechanics such as the hover mechanic were given extra functionality, now allowing the player to move while hovering akin to a jet pack. Other mechanics such as the grenade roll made are functionally the same as the mechanic was originally but did not receive the visual polish that was intended.

prototyping

Once the suite of player mechanics were determined and documented, the next step was to work with the programming team to prototype and create a solid framework to iterate upon. This meant creating rapid-prototypes to test mechanics which were then improved and finalized to create the final mechanics.

Call-out sheet

After the team settled on the gameplay direction, it was my job as the systems designer to create a set of core mechanics for our player character. The systems I ended up drafting in this call out sheet were: a defensive shield raise mechanic, a grenade roll and detonate mechanic, a hover mechanic, and an energy shield reflect mechanic. This call out sheet was used to communicate to the programming team what the goal of each system was.

Brainstorming/Finding References

Once the suite of player mechanics were determined and documented, the next step was to work with the programming team to prototype and create a solid framework to iterate upon. This meant creating rapid-prototypes to test mechanics which were then improved and finalized to create the final mechanics.

Credits

Jalin Johnson

Environment Artist, Lighting Artist, Asset Collection, 3D Modeler, Rigging Artist, Character Texture Artist, Character Animation

Lee Rodgers

Tim Lin

Matthew Meldrum

Samuel Schlenker

Mabry Schlenker

Character Animation, Project Management, Level Design, Audio

Scriptor, Gameplay Programmer

Scriptor, UI Programmer

System Designer, Gameplay Designer

2D Concept Artist