Dung Battles

Overview

Dung Battles is a party game where you compete as dung beetles battling it out for the most dung. This was a game I worked on for Tranfuzer 2021 as part of the team Zero Qualms. Created in Unity and programmed in C#. In brief I was responsible for the player controls, camera, local co-op support, animations and handling the rounds of the game (scoring, round timer and outcome handling). Additionally, I was required to also capture in-game footage and set pieces for the trailer.

What is DungBattles?

Dung battles is a local party game where players battle it out to collect the most dung before the time runs out. Roll, Climb, Glide, Steal and Flip your way to victory against up to 3 other players.

My Role

As one of three programmers on the project I was mainly responsible for the character controller and camera. This presented some interesting challenges as along with traditional movement the beetle could also climb surfaces and glide. One of those challenges was keeping the input space and camera orientation consistent and intuitive. This was important for the ease of use and feel of the player controller. A key feature of the gameplay was being able to "flip" other beetles to knock other players away and stun them. This allowed you to force players away from your nest and flip them off of any dung they are rolling. I was also responsible for the implementation of the animations using animation blending and animation masks as the beetle could expand it's wings when the player prompted to taunt and glide.

As I was responsible for character controls, I opted to try the new (at the time) Unity Input system as we were aiming for controller aswell as keyboard and mouse. The new input system also had the capability to support additional input systems for other players, so I ended up also working on the local multiplayer; including the pregame lobby and split screen within the actual game.

Sadly, Dung Battles wasn't chosen for further funding at the end of Tranfuzer and the team went their seperate ways onto new projects, jobs and adventures.