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Video Showcase
Sanity's Descent is a top down 2D rogue-like where your main goal is to gain as many points as possible. However, unlike most rogue-likes where there is an end; in this game there isn't. Rather in this game, you must fight your own hubris as the game only ends when you leave the game or if you die. If you die, your score doesn't get saved however if you leave the game; your score will show up on the leaderboard.
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You gain score by finding items around the map. Pick up an item and you will gain score. Each item has its own purpose too as if you go back to your base; you will be able to deposit the items you found to enhance your abilities. For example, you can level up your sword, heal yourself or increase your sanity meter; a mechanic I'll explain soon.(Also if you gain enough score, you will be able to upgrade max health, sanity amount or dash cooldown).
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As you progress through your run,you will encounter haunting ghouls who will try to attack and end your run. Overtime, the game will get harder and more difficult enemies will spawn!
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The map will also randomly generate a new environment if you explore enough of the environment and return to your base; stopping the game from feeling too tedious.
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And last but not least, the sanity mechanic itself. Overtime you will lose more sanity. The more sanity you lose; the harder the game becomes. You could either get randomly teleported across the map, you could temporarily have your inputs reversed, a fake window's security pop-up can even appear! There are quite a few events which can take place if your sanity is too low. You also will lose sanity if you're in the proximity of an enemy...so be careful.
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Development-Behind The Scenes
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Sanity's Descent came about whilst initially brainstorming ideas for what I wanted my Unity project to be about. I had a lot more experience in Unity rather than Unreal at the time so I decided to challenge myself and make a mechanically rich game in the span of around 2 months.
In this section you'll see in more depth my ideas behind certain mechanics like the home-base, level generation and sanity mechanic.
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Home base
The home base is where the game is the most
peaceful. I wanted this to be the case since
it would let the player have a breather from all
of the chaos outside. Whilst you are in here,
you get to deposit all of your points and you
also get to upgrade your abilites as well as
see your best scores. This was done to help
re-inforce that feeling of homeliness.
I also made the conscious decision to hide the
players current score if you're not in the base
as it would build suspense but it would also
make the player look forward to heading back;
even if they are only doing so to deposit their
points.
Level Generation
The level generation by far took the longest out
of everything in this game whilst developing it.
My method of creating this mechanic was by creating a lot of actors. Their job would be to spawn
random prefabs which would contain data for the environment as well as enemy spawners. I also made
it so the level would only generate if the player
reached a certain point threshold. This would let
the player scout the area and get somewhat used
to it. It would also help create a more powerful
effect since it could take the player by surprise,
hopefully re-enforcing the idea that they're in
a haunted environment.
Sanity Mechanic
The sanity mechanic was really fun to develop. The idea behind this mechanic is to make the player cautious around their environment a lot more. This way it would make the player have to strategies a lot more with how they play the game. For example, you might be tempted to go further into the environment however if it's full of enemies; you may re-consider in case your sanity gets too low.
The more sanity you lose, the more difficult the effects become. To stop this mechanic from being too frustrating though; I made it so you'd only have mild annoyances at the start. The screen fading to dark, the UI disappearing for a bit, weird sounds. Later however if your sanity is too low, you could receive a fake pop up obstructing your view, your controls could get inverted or you could even get teleported randomly in rare occurrences.