Blood Rush
Blood Rush is a VR rail shooter where your HP is your ammo.
Tying the player's health and ammo into one resource presented a challenge when designing the game's combat. We wanted combat to be strategic, chaotic, and aggressive. However this mechanic only promoted strategy through careful and deliberate firing.
Players could recover health/ammo through pickups and checkpoint health stations, however this alone made gameplay feel random and stressful.
Taking inspiration from DOOM (2016) glory kills, we introduced a melee weapon that could be used to drain enemies of their health while replenishing your own. This encouraged players to switch between melee and ranged combat dynamically, while adding aggressive gameplay and player agency to the game's resource management.
With the introduction of melee, a lot of the problems faced with the shared resource were resolved and aligned combat with our vision.
Engine:
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Unreal Engine
Language:
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C++/Blueprints
Role:
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Game Design
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Player Mechanics Implementation
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Level Design
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Art/Animation
Development
Blood Rush was developed in a team across four months while I was at university.
During development, I acted as the game's director. I was responsible for the game's vision, design, and setting up all the player mechanics (Ranged / Melee / Locomotion). As well as level and encounter design.
I was also responsible for modelling the player's hand and weapons, as well as most of the environmental assets.
After four months of development we had successfully put together a build showcasing the core gameplay in a single mission.
