Hard Heads

About

Hard Heads is a competitive bullet-hell shooting video game where 2 players must fight against each other while protecting their vulnerable sides from the ricocheting bullets. Each of the players have 3 lives. Players can lose a life from getting a hit on the vulnerable side. Both players’ bullets can hurt either player; meaning that a player can die from their own bullets. This prevents random shooting because it could backfire. Each player also has a 2 second cooldown between every 5 bullets to reload. The bullets will disappear after 5 bounces to prevent the map from having an overwhelming amount of bullets in it. Alongside 2 of my classmates, we created everything in Unity using Visual Studio Code for the scripts.

Our Game

My Roles

In this game, I worked on most of the user interface including all of the menus and buttons. I linked all of the scenes together so the players can seamlessly travel through the start, how to play, map select, game, and winner scenes. I also created both of our current maps including a static map and a moving object map. After our first prototype, I converted our controls to have one player use a controller and another use a keyboard. I created the vulnerable sides for the players to distinguish the difference between the ball hitting the player’s vulnerable sides and the player blocking the bullet with a non-vulnerable side. I then created the health system because I initially had the players die after one hit to the vulnerable side, but I realized that the game was finishing too fast and there was no time for any emotion to build up. I gave each player 3 lives that’s displayed at the top, so when they get hit on the vulnerable side, one of the hearts disappears to represent losing a life. Our professor pointed out that the human brain likes to see some sort of trail attached to the bullet to determine the direction, so I added a bullet trail. I also added the explosion animation when the player dies to make the game more exciting and give the other player more satisfaction from winning.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Through the creation of this game I learned that I’m capable of more things than I think I am. One of my groupmates did not work on the game after the first prototype, so I had to step up to accomplish all of the ideas we talked about. I learned that I’m capable of doing more if I set my mind to it. I felt pressured because we had big ideas for a short amount of time, and sadly not all of our ideas were perfectly executed. However, I’m proud of what I created and I’m glad to say that majority of it was my work. I also learned the importance of having good teammates. Having one of the teammates contribute little to nothing took a toll on our team because we only had 2 other members to work on the game. I’m grateful for my other teammate because we pulled his weight and programmed the powerup. Everyone needs to pull their own weight in a team.

Here is the link to our website, feel free to check it out: Hard Heads.