Arcade Survivors
Summary
A Vampire Survivors-inspired co-op action game created for the Brno Game Jam 2023. Features highly modular RPG systems, hybrid 3D/pixel-art visuals, and dynamic reality-glitching shaders.
Project Overview
Arcade Survivors was developed over a single weekend for the Brno Game Jam 2023. Heavily inspired by the auto-battler/survivor genre (such as Vampire Survivors), the game serves as both an action-packed jam submission and a technical prototype for cooperative mechanics in Unity.
From a team perspective, this project was unique. I handled the entirety of the programming and technical implementation while serving as a mentor to a student with no prior game development experience. I guided her through the process of asset preparation and art pipeline integration, making it a highly rewarding collaborative and educational weekend.
Gameplay & Co-Op Prototype
The game’s backstory revolves around the merging of two realities: the real world and a retro video game universe. Players must fight off relentless waves of enemies spawned by this dimensional collapse.
A major focus of the project was experimenting with cooperative gameplay interactions. The systems were designed to handle multiple entities on screen simultaneously, testing the bounds of co-op engagement in a chaotic, wave-based survival format.
Visuals & Reality Glitches
To visually represent the merging of realities, I utilized Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline (URP) alongside the “ProPixelizer” asset pack to achieve a distinct hybrid aesthetic — mixing smooth 3D models with retro pixel-art rendering.
- Dynamic Shaders: The visual feedback relies heavily on shaders. When the player takes damage, the game triggers a material-swapping glitch effect that pixelates the screen, reinforcing the “video game reality” bleeding into the world.
- Environmental Glitches: The reality-merging glitches are explicitly controlled via custom visual effect scripts, periodically distorting the environment to add depth to the atmosphere.
Technical Architecture
Under the hood, the game was built using a highly modular, component-based approach to RPG and action mechanics. Even though it was a rapid prototype, the codebase was structured cleanly:
- Entity Controllers: Input logic is strictly separated between the player controllers and the AI controllers, allowing the same fundamental combat systems to drive both the player and the varied enemy types.
- Decoupled Combat: Fighting mechanics are completely isolated from movement. Weapon data and projectile behaviors are decoupled, allowing for rapid iteration and balancing of the survivor-style attacks.
- Robust RPG Backend: The progression system utilizes ScriptableObjects to define leveling curves, cleanly separating the data from the game logic. Health, experience tracking, and upgrades are fully modular, interacting seamlessly with the core wave-spawning game loop.