Platform: PC
Language: C#
Tools: Custom Engine
Duration: 7 Months
Completion: 2013
Team Size: 6
Hush is a 2D stealth platformer which is designed to be very unforgiving if you are detected. Once detected the game becomes very difficult and at times almost impossible in order to encourage stealth play and forcing the player to slow down, look around and figure out the best approach for each section. The player can crawl to avoid the sight of enemies and turrets and to crawl through smaller sections of the levels. The player can also jump, wall jump and grab ledges to give the levels more verticality and allow more freedom for the design. The enemies will patrol a given area and will attack the player when the player comes into the enemies cone of vision.
There are two ways that the enemies can be killed, a stealth attack from behind and throwing knives. The stealth attack is extremely difficult and should only be attempted after running out of knives. The knives are one hit kill and are thrown using the right analog. There are vending machines throughout the levels which you can use scrap to create new throwing knives.
The player can also be detected by cameras, turrets and sound which will all trigger the alarm putting the enemies in an alerted state where they will patrol much faster. The alarm can be disabled using the red alarm terminals putting the enemies back to their regular patrol pattern.
The game was made using a custom made engine, created by one of the programmers on the team, which functioned in a similar way to XNA. A simple level editor was also made by one of the programmers on the team in order to allow the designers to make easily make new levels based on pre-designed layouts.
The areas of the game that I worked on were the gameplay elements. This includes the character controls and abilities and all of the objects within the level which were the enemies, the turrets, the cameras, the crates, the scrap pick-ups and the terminals. Gameplay programming and player mechanics is a very exciting part of programming for me and although I enjoy most programming, gameplay programming is the area I have the most passion for.
Some of the areas from later on in level 2.
Bryn Slack 