During my time in University, a friend and I created a simple game engine in C++ to make a game old Wolfenstein clone with a twist. All the enemies are invisible until the player activates battery-powered glasses to see them.
The game starts of in prison area. It has fewer enemies spread out over large area with more open spaces. Which should make it easier for the player to spot and eliminate.
To incentifice the player to explore and run into hidden monsters. Side paths exist which pickups that can restore the players health or increase it permanently.
Playing into the theme of the enemies being invisible monsters we purposefully placed some enemies around corners and near health pickups, that would draw the players attention away from their surroundings. Some enemies can be spotted before entering new rooms, while some won’t be activated before the player commits themselves to entering the room.
The player eventually goes into a collapsed tunnel section with constantly twisting passages with holes in the walls. The contorted geometry and shorter distances between player and monster offcause increases the games challange, since the player are pushing further into the monsters domain.
Before heading into the final section, the player gets a health and armor boost. The player then goes through a short undefended section before heading into the final boss area. The intention with the short section was to build up tension for the final area. Because the player have just been fighting in tight cooridores, they will be on constant alert in this final are of the game.
The final boss arena is a simple bullet hell, since the Boss shoots multiple projectiles at a time and has a bunch of underlings with him. The wide open area allows the monster AI to zigzag effectively side to side. So the player still relies a lot on their googles to see the enemies in this open area. Adding to the difficulty, the boss has multiple lives. The player wins the game when the boss is defeated.
If we had to redo a thing, it would be this boss fight. Since the final challange of the game has little to do with the theme and the way the player has been playing all game. It would be better if the boss area was a laberienth, where the boss could jump in and out of cover to shot the player.
Download the game here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qScsaHDgiOPVUAuB5IrjZ6agG3FDB_FF/view?usp=drive_link