Vector Flight

Description

Vector Flight is a high-octane, local co-op twin-stick shooter designed for up to four players. Set in a minimalist neon environment, players must coordinate their movement and fire-power to survive endless waves of increasingly complex enemy patterns.

Award-Winning Design

Vector Flight received significant critical acclaim during its festival run, proving the strength of its core mechanical loop and accessibility.

• Winner: Best Student Game Design — Dutch Game Awards 2015
• Winner (Tied 1st): Audience Award — Indigo 2016

Vertex Art

As a solo developer, I wanted to create a striking visual identity without relying on traditional 2D sprites. I developed a system to render line-art created through programming, using vertex-based math to draw shapes directly in the engine. This allowed for:

• Perfect Scaling: Visuals remain crisp at any resolution.
• Dynamic Animations: Shapes can shift, glow, and react to game logic in real-time.
• Performance: Extremely lightweight rendering, allowing for hundreds of projectiles on screen simultaneously.

Balancing & Feel

With four players sharing one screen, "readability" was the biggest challenge. I spent the majority of development iterating on the Game Design and Balancing:

• Difficulty Scaling: Implemented a system that scales enemy density and bullet speed based on the collective performance of the players using heat-maps and section-patterns.
• Co-op Synergy: Designed enemy patterns that encourage players to cover different angles, making the game feel significantly different when played solo vs. with a full group.
• Input Polish: Fine-tuned the twin-stick deadzones and acceleration to ensure "pixel-perfect" dodging.

Responsibilities

• Solo Development: Handled all programming, math-based art generation, and sound implementation.
• Game Design: Focused on the mathematical balancing of bullet patterns and player power-ups.