curse of the lockmaster
First level of CURSE OF THE LOCKMASTER, made entirely by me in unity3d and Fmod.
The key 3D assets were made by Maja Miskeri.
Story
CURSE OF THE LOCKMASTER is a game about a hero (Mr.Skeleton) suffering the curse of the lockmaster. The curse causes every key to deform and no longer fit locks.
Our hero looks for the lockmaster in his eerie dungeon, but gets stuck as a result of the curse. He passes away when all his resources are exhausted.
500 years later he is awoken by the VVITCH, who tells him he needs to get out of there in order to save himself and the VVITCH. This however requires killing everyone. Mr. Skeleton is not too keen on the idea of murdering people, but the VVITCH reassures him that he has nothing to lose as a dead man. The VVITCH also gifts him a mysterious magical weapon that instantly kills enemies (sawed off shotgun).
As our hero is now just a skeleton, he has no muscles to move his body. The VVITCH therefore puts him on fire, which hurts so bad that Mr. Skeleton starts running immediately.
Gameplay
COTL at its core is a movement shooter, with inspiration from the likes of Doom 2016, Ultrakill, Dusk and Titanfall. The goal is to finish every map as fast as possible and to kill every enemy while continuously gaining more speed.
The core mechanics are as following: sprint, dash, boost on kill, wallgrab, wallslide, walljump, jump pads, teleport, massacre (more speed the more enemies killed) and a shotgun that instantly kills everything in a cone shape in front of Mr.Skeleton.
You can’t die in this game (as Mr. Skeleton is already dead), but you will lose points if your health goes under zero. Additionally to the lost points, the music becomes muted which encourages the player to reset the game to regain the full experience.
Coding
The game consists of 43 individual C# scripts running at the same time (which arguably could be optimised).
The biggest challenge was making Mr.Skeleton both feel powerful and fast at the same time. The movement mechanics of the game in the beginning made Mr.Skeleton feel very floaty. By changing his y-axis gravity and by making a lot of his mechanics focused on killing it counteracted his “floaty-ness”.
The movement functions are a variety of bools and float variables going into the character controller, that gets information from the game’s diffrent tags and then checks if a movement ability is available/on cooldown. If its criteria has been reached, (like wallgrab) the code checks if the player is in the middle of another movement ability, is touching a wall. It it returns true, then start wallslide. Is the player raycasting towards another object with the tag “wall”? If yes, disable the other movement mechanics, and ready up walljump with X amount of speed. If “jump” button has been pressed, jump towards target area.
Music and sound design
The music is a mix of horrorcore and metal, as I wanted the music to be gritty and fit the aesthetic, while keeping a fast rhythm.
The music consist of guitar recordings, digital bass, 808’s, metal drums and “intrusive” sound design to put the player on edge. The system i’ve set up in Fmod is made by parameters counting 1-9 to different loop regions. If a criteria has been met (e.g. enter this zone, kill this enemy), it would do a timed count in, or play a stinger into the next section.
Since the game is so fast paced, I wanted there to always be music. Everything i did was to make the player feel gritty and strong. In the exploring stages or if no enemies were around, the music would usually play in 4/4, but at some sections (like the last fast-paced shooting hall) the music changes to 7/4 to make the player feel more on edge and to make the music seem more dynamic/seamless.
The sound design is mainly realistic with some unserious elements to it.
Some sounds are for gameplay, and some things are for the immersion. An example on immersion could be Mr.Skeletons footsteps. Because he is a skeleton and therefore lacks muscles and skin, his footsteps are made with xylophones mixed with actual footsteps, Randomly, a sound of rattling would play to further the sound of bones clacking.
Then there is the gameplay specific sounds, which are made for the benefit of the player.
It serves as a support/explanation to certain events, such as entering places or picking up items. Examples include the “orb/key” item having the sound of a lock unlocking, or the teleport having the “woosh” effect.
The shotgun is layered with a thunder strike, to make is sound more powerful. Jump pads are also in stereo so the player knows that they just hit a jump pad, as some jump pads are not visible with the eye.
Contact
2023 - AV Sound Design