Death's Refrain

Infernumb is our team; the game is Death’s Refrain. It’s a top down game. It was initially supposed to be a rhythm RPG where everything moves with the beat, which was my idea, but I underestimated the timing problem and we had to pivot last minute. It became a turn based, field of view game where you can only hit an enemy if they are in view, much like the board game Warhammer. My friend came up with the story, and I came up with the name.

We made it for our Software Engineering 2 module (GAM 200), over two trimesters, from year 2 trimester 1 to trimester 2, with a team of 10 including me, on our own custom engine, Hellmaker. The tilemap editor was built by a teammate.

What I did

I was the project manager for the first trimester, then I relinquished it to a friend to handle the design side and focused on my own work. On the engine I made the audio system, the rhythm system and the scripting system, and I made the placeholder BGM at the start (the two tracks are below the video). Later I moved to level design: the tutorial level, all of Level 1 and its rooms, and Level 2 Room 1.

The grade

We got an A. The feedback was that it was an unfortunate situation, but we were praised for how much we did despite the challenges.

Looking back

The hardest part was human relations. One teammate was falling behind and the whole team had to step in, and I was handling both that end and the professor’s end, so after the first trimester I handed the project manager role over and focused on my work. Looking back, I would have taken hold of the situation earlier: calling out the lack of work and setting hard deadlines, not agreeing to every piece of work that was behind, and handling the separation of work better.

My contribution video

My personal contribution video covers the design and programming I did for the project. The music I made for the game is below it.