Rock Monster Rush Revisited

Rock Monster Rush

Inspiration

Rock Monster Rush started out as a retro JRPG style battler I wanted to make something that was very different than anything else I had seen in Horizon Worlds and I think I accomplished that. But as I played it more, and heard from other players, it just wasn't deep enough.

You'd battle through random groups of enemies, but your choices were pretty thin and there was little in the way of strategy or how much you controlled the outcome. Ultimately, the game was lacking interesting choices.

It was fun in short bursts, it was certainly different, but it needed more.

So when the time came to revisit an existing world for this latest competition I knew I wanted to take this to the next level.

What it does

Rock Monster Rush Revisited as I've named it in this competition takes the fun sprite-based art style and retro vibes, but converts it into a strategic card battler. No more are you just hitting your most powerful spell or attacking every turn, but instead you have to carefully choose how to spend your action points each hand. There's limited healing, so if you want to make it through the entire dungeon you have to be smart, and maybe a bit lucky.

How we built it

This was built on top of the previous codebase, piece by piece replacing huge portions of the game. While it's certainly recognizable as Rock Monster Rush, it's wildly different under the hood. The game is even more driven by the Custom UI system in Horizon Worlds than before, pushing it further and making the game much more enjoyable and easier to play on mobile (and web!).

Challenges we ran into

Unfortunately a lot of the challenges turned out to be issues with the Horizon Worlds platform. I found a memory / component leak in the UI system that tanked performance that I had to scramble to work around. And then the morning of the deadline (this morning!) there was a massive bug in the new release that broke the Custom UI system that this game relies on. Thankfully despite some panic the engineering team at Meta was able to turn around a fix pretty rapidly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I think the game is a lot more fun. It has a lot of room to grow and has a lot more reason to play through more than just once than the initial release did. Most notably the experience you gain carries over from play to play, allowing you to unlock more cards and get to the really fun stuff (like the lightning spell that blasts all of your enemies!)

What's next for Rock Monster Rush Revisited

Being a card battler, a LOT of the variety comes from different enemy abilities and different player abilities. I have a small pile of them I'm still playing around with that I can't wait to add in after the judging period is over. There's also different Rock Monsters you can unlock (with both free and paid options) and choose to play as that will be coming right after the judging period is up as well.

Lastly, I have plans for a harder "raid mode" that's intended for parties of 3+ people where each person plays a role to ensure the party can succeed. It needs more testing than I was able to get done by the deadline, but it should be a blast when it's ready!