Introduction

Hello and welcome to our game project Shrimpact! The fast-paced underwater brawler where you become mantis shrimp and punch, smash, and blast your opponents right out of the arena!

This group project is brought to you by a team of students at DAE Howest.

Our group consists of 3 coders: Jelle, Tuur and Arthur and 3 artists: Briana, Margo and Xander. We will be updating this page with weekly Devlogs and hope to bring you with us on this amazing journey!

As said before, the idea of our game is that you must knock your opponent out of the arena by hitting them with your lightning-fast punches. Inspired by Super Smash Bros, Shrimpact features a damage meter, the more damage you take, the farther you’ll fly when hit. But there’s more! Throughout the game, a boss will appear, forcing you to decide: team up to fight it or betray your opponents for the upper hand? The boss leaves the arena in shambles, forcing you to take it out as quickly as possible. On top of that, environmental hazards like powerful currents and whirlpools will constantly shake up the battlefield. And if those don’t do the job, the upward current will launch you up.

Will you survive the deep, or get launched back to the surface of the ocean?

What makes Shrimpact unique?

Shrimpact isn’t just another arena brawler, it’s a chaotic underwater showdown where every second is unpredictable. It has fast paced-combat with environmental dangers and a constant shift in alliances for a unique experience. The battlefield is constantly shifting, you’re never truly in control. Danger comes from every direction, whether it’s your opponent’s punch, a boss’ attack or the environment. The shifting dynamics from PvP and PvE force you to adapt on the fly, creating unpredictable and hilarious backstabbing moments. Unlike most “platform” fighters where falling down means dying, Shrimpact flips those rules: going up is what takes you down! A massive upward current will launch players to their demise. On top of fighting each other, players must be wary and deal with a massive underwater boss destroying the stage.

Art

What view fits the game best?

For the camera view we thought about a lot of possibilities, at first, we had the same view as Super Smash Bros in mind. But this idea was quite quickly thrown away since we wanted a more chaotic feel. We thought of a semi top-down view and lowered it quite a bit. This together with a low FOV keeps everything more visible and evenly sized. The tilt gives a nice sense of depth, making it so you can judge distance between elements. It also allows for better readability of animations and abilities, not making it as flat as a top-down view.

Shrimps and shaders? 

What kind of shader do we need for Shrimpact? We decided to go with a toon shader, giving a comfy and cute feel to the characters. This also makes everything quite a lot more readable which is necessary in a chaotic game such as this one.

Coding

UE5 vs Unity?

Unity’s use of C# allows for a faster and more flexible development process compared to Unreal’s C++. Shrimpact also features a vibrant, stylized underwater world, and Unity is well-suited for this style. Unlike Unreal, which leans heavily toward photorealism, Unity provides better tools and shaders that align with the colorful, cartoonish look we’re aiming for. Unity’s large asset store and documentation give us access to more resources and models, speeding up development. With Unity’s well-documented features and active community, troubleshooting and problem-solving become much easier. Unity also has a simpler local multiplayer implementation which is perfect for this project.

Upcoming Week

So what are the plans for the upcoming week? First of all we’re gonna work on our Art Bible, creating our uniquely cute art style.We’ll work on our color schemes for the shrimp, enemies and environment. And we’ll also figure out how the arena and the overall environment should look shape wise. 

The coders will make a core gameplay prototype to check if the game is actually fun to play without all the bells and whistles added. We’ll keep you updated and hope to see you next week!