Introduction To The Game

Welcome to Devlog 0 for our fast-paced, top-down(ish) action shooter, where YOU are the weapon, bringing destruction to your surroundings while racking up crazy combos! Think of it as Hotline Miami meets Superhot’s slowdown mechanics, with a twist: you can possess any enemy you encounter! Just imagine the coolest game, and that's exactly what we are making!

This game is a continuation of our rushed Pirate Software Game Jam 16 project! The original game was made in roughly four days by our team, and we saw so much potential for a fun game that we decided to revisit it and do it properly this time! If you want to try out the Game Jam prototype, you can do so [HERE].

Now, onto introducing the team!

The Team

We have many talented people on the team. As of right now, we mainly have programmers and game designers, so if you’re good at art or music and want to join the project, let’s talk!

Well, we don’t need art and music for a while, we gotta get the core game loop as fun as possible! But we’ll cover that in a later segment. For now, let’s meet the team!

(Our game without any Music and Art experice, quite handsome i would say)

Team Members

Tim (Programmer, software design, UX.)

Tim has a bachelor’s degree in Games and Learning Technologies and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Games at ITU in Copenhagen.

Tim loves to focus on juicing up a game, creating fun levels, and crafting user experiences. Besides this game, Tim has worked on a plethora of projects throughout his studies and has become well-versed in Unity and game feel (flow).

Other than being a power-hungry DM, Tim is great at creating lore and immersion, qualities he strives to bring into every game he works on.

Tim currently has a Balatro, Slay the Spire, or just general roguelite addiction. The AAA meetings are not helping…

Fun fact about Tim

Even though he is our strongest programmer as he benches four plates, he still struggles with while loops.

Emil (Programmer, UI/UX. Junior Content-creator)

Emil has a bachelor’s degree in Games and Learning Technologies and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Games at ITU in Copenhagen.

Emil is the youngest member of the team. He likes to focus on developing mechanics, and aside from programming, Emil also wants to try out user outreach in the form of devlogs and other content around the game.

Emil is also great at game design and game feel (flow). He tends to focus on the programming challenges of game development.

Lastly, Emil is the team’s only single guy (yes, you can shoot your shot 😎). He enjoys D&D, choir, and being bad at League of Legends.

Fun fact about Emil

Emil works out intensely for three months straight, then doesn’t go to the gym for another three months, peek bulk behaviour!

Nikolaj (Programmer, Tech-lead, Producer.)

Nikolaj has a bachelor’s degree in Games and Learning Technologies and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Games and Learning Technologies at SDU in Odense.

Nikolaj is the team’s most experienced programmer, having worked for more than three years in the industry. He helps set up the framework and is currently acting as our Producer, helping everyone with a workflow that simulates a real work environment.

Nikolaj is responsible for the broader overview, pull-request checking, and other “parental tasks.” Being the team’s strong supporting pillar, we strive to learn a lot from him, and he’s great at sharing his wisdom with us.

When Nikolaj isn’t being the big brother of the team, he’s smashing noobs in Discgolf like a real senior developer!

Fun fact about Nikolaj

During the first exam on the bachelor, Nikolaj got told by the censor that he was like an adult cleaning up the kids room. “Fake News” - Tim (part of the same group)

Joakim (Programmer, UI/UX, Junior-producer, Content-creator, Business man)

Joakim has a bachelor’s degree in Games and Learning Technologies and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Games at ITU in Copenhagen.

Joakim enjoys programming and getting detail-oriented, sometimes a little too much so. He likes a challenge, programming something new, and is trying to learn some pixel art, as well as soaking up Nikolaj’s experience.

Joakim is a great communicator, having taught programming, robotics, and e-sports for multiple years. He’s also learning the ways of a producer, becoming a great communicator between the different disciplines of game development.

Joakim doesn’t fear public speaking, unlike many programmers, so he’s the go-to guy whenever public relations are needed. Along with this, he’s also the main content creator, having some experience with devlogs, videos, and whatever else the team might want to do.

Joakim enjoys Civilization and might be addicted, one hour sessions typically last between four to six hours… (No I will not seek help)

Fun fact about Joakim

Joakim has more than 7,000 hours in CS:GO. He copes with this fact by saying he made money playing for a team. His OSRS addiction, on the other hand… Joakim has no coping answer for… yet.

Pre-Production Work

The team wants to learn from this project more than anything else, so we’re using software and development methods we might encounter on a real team. Some of this might seem overkill for this project, but we’re doing it to learn.

During the game jam, we created a rough prototype in just four days. It had basic movement, shooting, and the possession mechanic. While it was far from polished, it proved that the core idea was fun and had potential. After the jam, we revisited the prototype and built a new MVP with more refined mechanics, code framework and a clearer vision.

To stay organized, we’re using Agile development with SCRUM, Jira for task management, Confluence for documentation, and GitHub for version control. We also created a Game Design Document to outline the game’s vision, mechanics, and features.

The project is brainstormed around the theme “You are the weapon” from Pirate Software Game Jam 16. We used brainstorming sessions to create an MVP, and since then, with way more time to develop, we’ve built a new MVP, defined our target player type, hook, and created a bunch of diagrams!

Timeline And Milestones

For the moment, we’re hoping to have a Steam version ready by summer. This might be optimistic, so we’ve left room for delays!

So far, the timeline and milestones look like this:

MVP (21/04/2025)

This is when we’re hoping to have our new MVP done, if you want to see what the MVP should include you can do so here, or just move to the next milestone.

MVP Content

• Intro Animation
  • Short
  • Should explain the plot and mechanics
  • Voice actor for the SCP
• Tutorial
  • Again the player tries all the mechanics
    • SCP talks to itself
  • leads to level 1
• Playtesting
  • Intro
  • Tutorial
  • Demo level
  • Checkpoints?
    • A/B testing
  • Mechanic
    • One shot
      • How many bullets in QTE?
    • Can turn into different guns?
  • Enemies
    • 3 types
    • Random patrolling or controlled?
    • Unpossessable enemy?
    • Indication of how far the enemy can see?
    • Boss and boss fight
  • Difficulty
  • Game feel (Flow)
    • Style of the game
  • Sound
  • Music
  • UI
  • Story
  • Player
    • Shooting with or without raycast?
    • Reloading
      • Reload faster if there is more bullets in the magasine?
    • Limitied or unlimited bullets?
    • Silence or talking/text
• 1 level
  • contains:
    • Entry
      • Walk from the tutorial into the level
    • Level design
      • Screen shake when people shoot
      • Location
        • Old-school research facility (Look at moodboard)
        • Hand-drawn style
        • //(Security camera shader)
      • Level with different rooms
        • sight over whole level
        • 5 rooms
      • Obstacles
        • Sliding Door (C.C.C - Colour Coded Clearance)
        • Furniture
          • 4 types
            • Destroyable when it makes sense
          • Shoot-through
        • (Exploding red barrel)
      • Sound and music
        • Soundtrack
          • One track
        • Sound effects
          • Shooting
            • All different guns
          • Sound effects for destroying
          • Reloading
          • One type floor = One type of sound for footsteps
          • Death sounds
            • Blood splatter or not?
    • Exit
      • Locked until all enemies are dead
      • Small simple cutscene that leads to the boss battle
• Enemies
  • 3 Normal type enemies
  • Detection system
    • With sight and sound(Different playstyles)
    • Indication of their range?
  • Shooting at player
  • patrolling
    • Random or controlled?
  • Possesion
    • Indicator
    • Some harder than others to possess, but always possible.
  • Death
    • Death animation
    • Ketchup
    • Knockback
      • Controlled knockback
• 1 Boss and boss fight
  • 3 stages
    • 1. Player fights against giant mech, when 33% hp lost, part of mech falls of, the player then has to control it to start stage 2
    • 2. Boss is immune while reparing, Player uses mech part to defend against a swarm of enemies.
    • 3. Boss has repaired with new gun, repeat step 1.
• Player
  • Camera angle should be like in stardew vally to provide the full player and some perspctive (Look at picture)
    • centred around the player but finding the point between the player and the mouse location
  • Quick time event to possess
    • Dies/loses if not able to possess a new body, or if the player misses a body.
    • Spacebar for shooting here?
  • Player design
    • An SCP that can morph into any gun it touches
    • With evil red/orange aura.
    • Possessed enemies uniforms changes color when possessed.
      • Turns back when no longer possessed.
• UI
  • Main Menu
    • Start game button
    • Settings
      • Volume
    • Exit game
  • Pause menu by pressing esc
    • Restart
    • Main menu
    • Resume
  • In game
    • Current Objective text
      • pulsating
    • Crosshair/aim
      • Reload indicator around crosshair
  • Game Over
    • //You loose text
    • Button to retry
    • button to quit
  • Win Screen
    • //You win text
    • Return to menu
  • Background music

Vertical Slice (19/05/2025)

The vertical slice should be a polished slice of the game, basically a refined MVP, but still only for a single level. Between the MVP and the vertical slice, we plan to playtest the game, implement user feedback, and refine other parts of the game as well.

Steam Page (20/05/2025)

We actually don’t know how long it will take to set this up, so the date is very much subject to change. We want to make a Steam page as soon as we have some gameplay to show, we’ve heard that’s the best time to do it.

Steam Next Festival (09/06/2025)

We would love to have either a great demo or version 1.0 done for the upcoming Steam Next Festival. We know this might be tight, so we’re prepared to aim for the one after this upcoming one.

Finishing Up

Thank you so much for reading our first devlog! If this game sounds even a tiny bit like something you’d enjoy, make sure to follow our progress on [Itch.io](This one for now, when MVP done, we will create a new one), [YouTube], or [Bluesky]!

Please Share Feedback

We’re not new to programming or game design, but we are new to actually committing to a project! So any feedback would be awesome. Have any cool ideas, suggestions, or thoughts? Please reach out!