The Catacombs

Inspiration

For The Catacombs I really wanted to take the wave-based shooter genre and mix it with a puzzle survival game to give the player a very different experience than your typical wave-based shooter game.

What it does

The Catacombs drops the player deep into the underground where they must fight off wave of attacks while also solving randomized Crytex Puzzles. The Crytex Puzzles are used to power up and light the rooms of each hallway. The Player can light the entire hallway to stop the spawning of the enemies from that hallway. Your light is your saving grace! You must make sure to keep your torch lit! Working together (or Solo) the players must solve puzzles to light all of the hallways to stop the enemies spawning to win!

How we built it

It was built using the Meta Horizon Worlds Engine, along with 3ds Max for modeling, and Substance Painter for texturing. I've also used Meta's Gen AI 3d models for level design.

Challenges we ran into

My main challenge was working around the very limited number of dynamic lights Horizon Worlds currently allows you to have. Another was trying to figure out a good streamlined tutorial to try and make the onboarding process as easy as possible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I would say that I am really happy with the game as a whole, combining the two genre I feel really works well together! I am also very happy with how great the puzzles also work with the swipe touch functionality on mobile!

What we learned

One of the best things I've learned is the incorporation of mobile swipe gestures! The whole local/server side scripting is very new to me and pretty confusing.

What's next for The Catacombs

I need to finish up the randomization of the puzzle so each playthrough is different. I would also like to add some quest, collectables, and in game currency for the world.