CELL


Cell is a 2D fast paced arcade shooter with puzzle elements that was made in XNA 4.0.  Cell was originally an 8 week student class assignment in the TorqueX 2D engine.  The original 4 team members, which included myself, converted Cell from TorqueX to XNA and prepared to submit for IGC.  This version of Cell, dubbed “Cell 2.0” by the team, took place over the summer during a 6 week break from school.  During this period the team size increased to 5, comprised of 2 Level Designers, 2 Artists, and 1 Programmer.

In Cell, the player must defeat the Nucleus of each level by destroying the corresponding matching color nodes of the Nucleus.  Each level has 3 stages, Blue, Yellow, and Red.  The player must swap the color of their weapon to match the color of the object they are shooting.  The player is also equipped with a limited number of bombs which chain all like connected nodes and cause massive area of effect damage upon detonation.  The puzzle aspect comes in when trying to quickly destroy all the nodes before too many spawn and the game is over.  Specialty nodes can deflect bullets, shoot their own bullets, disable player movement, and change colors.  Cell has special powerups that can be obtained, providing invincibility, faster fire rates, bombs, and more powerful bullets.

My responsibilities for Cell included:

  • Designed the tutorial level
  • Designed 60% of the main game levels
  • Designed over 30 arcade levels
  • Sound Designer

During the long process of Cell, I learned several things:

  • Importance of making a tutorial clear and concise, especially if when the game presents a new mechanic
  • Problems that occur when transitioning from one engine to another
  • Issues with a customized 2D engine
  • Creating clear and good sound effects

Main menu screen.  The game shipped with the very level editor used to make the game, allowing users to make custom content of their own.

Blue Nucleus in the center of screen.  To destroy the Nucleus, the player must destroy all blue nodes first.

Specialty nodes provide interesting challenges as now the player must be aware of not only what they are shooting, but what they are  shooting next to as if the player misses the specialty node attack when hit.

Upon defeating all 3 stages, the Nucleus detonates causing a beautiful light show.