In a future world where the powers of magnetism have the potential to turn the tides of war, a new experiment
is conceived to create the ultimate superweapon. Now, nineteen years after the experiment's inception, the subject
has learned of his future purpose: to maintain the supremecy of the United States as a world superpower by force.
It is now time for action: you must escape the complex or the future of the entire planet may be in jeopardy.
The Complex is an exhilarating snapshot of the escape of a powerful experiment by the US government. You play as
the experiment, a nameless scientist who must fight his way out of the complex in order to save the world.
Game Information
Placement x/10
Graphics: 8.11 3rd Place
Sound: 8.22 1st Place
Gameplay: 6.83 2nd Place
Innovation: 6.67 6th Place
Completeness: 8.22 1st Place
Theme: 7.39 5th Place
Overall: 7.67 1st Place
Music
Number of tracks: 10
Number of sound effects: 11
Tracks
Right-click and save-as to save the songs
Day 1: Within the first two hours, The Complex was conceived and we began dishing out work to each member of the team. We also had planned out
quite a large storyline involving many of the key elements that the finished version has. With the basic idea (an overhead shooter where magnets
are used extensively throughout the levels) we all started to work diligently for the next 31 hours. I started off by creating some sprite engines
along with "nodes" for the magnets and playing around with the timing to make sure everything ran smoothly. Eventually we got our first character
sprite and some level tiles and we were able to start making some levels.
Day 2: At 32 hours we had the basic game engine completed with a level editor and the ability to move your character, shoot, and move from area to
area. I decided to make each area in the game have its own module to simplify the scripting which called for sharing a lot of code between modules.
At 41 hours we had our first (and only) enemy: the turret. This was the final necessary element before we could start designing actual gameplay. The
41 hour release has our first rendition of the hallway complete with the ability to shoot and kill the turrets and a subset of the soundtrack.
Day 3: The last day was spent largely creating the areas in the game. Josh and I put together a map of the complex and since Josh had completed all of his
music, he started working with the level editor creating most of the areas. While Josh was doing level design, I worked on scripting for the areas along with
doing play-testing to ensure the areas were beatable. Within a time-period of about 18 hours we created the entire complex and added all of the scripting
necessary to make our game complete.
The last few hours of the competition were then spent debugging and playtesting the game, ensuring that it was possible to play entirely through. I also
added the ability to skip some of the longer cut-scenes to make them a bit less annoying.
Screenshots
