VaultDrop

Inspiration

I've always loved heist movies, especially the scenes where a spy is lowered into a vault on a rope and has to carefully dodge laser beams. I wanted to make a game where you are that spy. Before this project, I made a Suika (watermelon) merge game in Unity, so I wanted to challenge myself with something completely different: a game with swinging physics, enemies that can spot you, and multiple levels to beat.

What it does

Vault Drop is a 2D heist game where you play as a thief hanging from a rope and lowering yourself into a vault to steal the money at the bottom.

W / S pulls you up and lowers you down. A / D swings you left and right. Lasers blink on and off, flicker as a warning, and some move back and forth. Security cameras sweep the room with a cone of light that turns red when they spot you. A shield power-up makes you safe for 2 seconds. A timer and best time let you compete against your own record. There are two levels: The Vault and The Deep Vault, which is much deeper and has a camera that follows you as you descend. The game also includes a title screen, How to Play page, pause menu, custom background art, and music.

How we built it

I built Vault Drop in Unity 6 using C#. I added each feature one at a time and tested it before moving on to the next.

The Rope The thief uses a Rigidbody2D and a DistanceJoint2D, which lets the character swing like a real pendulum. I draw the rope as a stretched sprite between the ceiling and the thief.
Lasers Each laser has settings for how long it stays on, how long it stays off, and whether it moves. This allowed me to create many different laser patterns using a single script.
Security Cameras The camera's light cone is generated in code. The game checks the thief's distance and angle from the camera to determine whether they are inside the light. When the camera spots the player, the light turns red.
Money, Shield, and Menus I added the money objective, shield power-up, win screen, best-time tracking, pause menu, and other UI elements to complete the game experience.
Level Builder I also created a level-building tool that can generate an entire level from a list of positions with one click. This made it much faster to design and experiment with new levels.

I used Claude, an AI assistant, to help write some of the code and explain Unity concepts. However, I came up with the game idea, created all of the art and backgrounds, chose the music, and tested and tweaked everything until the game felt right.

Challenges we ran into

Building the game came with several problems that taught me a lot about Unity.

The lasers weren't catching me. My thief's collider was set to "Is Trigger," so Unity wasn't registering the collisions the way I expected. I fixed this by having the lasers check for the thief themselves every frame.

The thief could swing through walls. The physics allowed the player to move outside the intended play area, so I added code that keeps the thief within the walls.

The background didn't extend through the entire level. At first, my background was attached to the camera, which meant it moved with the camera instead of staying in the world. I learned that for a tall level, the background needs to remain stationary while the camera moves through the level.

My first build was just a blue screen. I eventually discovered that I had the wrong scene selected in the build settings.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I built a working swinging rope system that makes the thief feel like they are actually hanging and moving from a rope.

What we learned

This project taught me a lot about both game development and problem-solving:

How Unity physics works, including rigid bodies, colliders, triggers, and joints How to break a large idea into smaller features and test each one individually How to use the Unity Console to find and fix bugs How to build a game for the web and publish it online How small details, such as a warning flicker before a laser activates, can make a game feel more fair and polished How to use AI as a development tool while still making the creative and design decisions myself

What's next for VaultDrop

There are several features I'd like to add in the future: A Next Level button that takes the player directly from Level 1 to Level 2 More levels with new traps, such as spinning lasers and guards Sound effects for getting caught and grabbing the money