Skills and Tools

Unity

  • Integrating art assets
  • Post processing effects
  • VFX graph
  • Writing scripts

Photoshop

  • Creating flipbooks for smoke particles

Maya

  • 3D modeling

Game Description

Beats & Bolts is a rhythm boss rush game set in the Industrial Revolution. The player plays as a factory worker who gets laid off due to being replaced by a giant machine that is capable of running all operations in a railway factory. Frustrated, they sneak into the factory to break the machine, however, the machine is dangerous and fights back fiercely. Inspired by Crypt of the NecroDancer, the player must move and attack on beat to the background song as they take down the central machine. Staying on beat allows the player to do more damage, while going off beat will result in tougher gameplay.

Project Information

This game was developed in a class setting by a team of 10 students. 4 students were from OCAD University, 4 students were from University of Toronto's computer science department, and 2 students were from University of Toronto's music department. 

We had a total of 10 weeks to develop a final demo version of the game. While the game was originally pitched as a boss rush game, there is only 1 boss due to time restraints. However, we do have 4 different difficulty settings (Easy, Medium, Hard, Insane) to cater to players of varying skill levels. 

This game was showcased at Level Up Toronto 2024 and GradEX 109.

My Roles

I was the team lead of this group. This means that in addition to my artist roles, I was also responsible for project management and documentation for the game. My contributions to the project include:

  • 3D modeling the environment
  • Creating VFX
  • Asset integration
  • Playtesting
  • Post-processing effects with scripts
  • Designing the tutorial sequence
  • Some UI implementation
  • Game design decisions
  • Scheduling meetings and creating agendas
  • Going through pages of feedback from playtesting to determine order of priority
  • Assigning roles and setting deadlines for team members
  • Writing the game design document, playtesting report, and the devlogs on the itch page

Itch Link

Here is the itch link where you can download the game and try it for yourself! You can also find devlogs there that feature videos of the different builds that the game went through during development. 

Art Assets Process Video

The following video provides a glimpse of my process of creating the stylized steam particles in the game. It also showcases all of the different visual effects I made for the game and the environment that I made.

Since I understand coding, I created a separate build from the game which allows the user to freely roam around the environment and view things from any angle. This build does not have the boss states active, however I added buttons that allows the user to trigger the different attacks in the game. This build can be found on the itch page and is called "Asset Viewer Version Windows".

3D Models

Here are some screenshots in the Maya editor of the models I made for the environment and for boss attacks.

Playlist of Progress Videos

Here is the full playlist of all of the progress videos that I recorded throughout the development of the game. You will be able to see what the game looked like in its earliest stages as a proof of concept and how it gradually developed to the final game demo. 

Using Format