Phase Shift

Phase Shift is a fast paced, high action, 2D bullet hell. Many years into the future scientists discover multiple miniature worm holes just beyond the solar system. Trying to use these as a means of transportation, they begin designing a ship that can stabilize the worm wholes and safely pass through them to unknown parts for the universe.

However an rival nation pays you, an unknown international thief, to steal the first prototype and give it to them. As forces trail you in your stolen ship you're left with two choices; Fight off the human ships or face what lies beyond the worm holes.

Some of the alien enemies

Each of the five levels take place in two side-by-side world's simultaneously. On the left side are human police forces in modern space ships. On the other side live unknown hostile alien species capable of interplanetary travel. Each world offers completely different sets of enemies, requiring different tactics. Enemies come in waves in both worlds, each alternating between stronger and weaker waves. In between each wave a wormhole passes by allowing the player to switch between worlds. This allows the player to only fight easy waves if they are having a tough time surviving or if they want extra points, power ups, or just a harder challenge they can fight every hard wave in the level.

Periodically through out the levels the players are forced to switch worlds by having to escape imminent threats through the wormholes. In the human world massive Dreadnought ships fill the world with bullets and ram through the player if they haven't escaped yet. In the alien world the player has to dodge a meteor shower before having to escape from a huge screen filling asteroid.

One of the massive Dreadnoughts

The player has a huge varied arsenal of weaponry to combat its enemies. Each level the player starts off by only shooting one bullet but can get power ups that increase the number off bullets per volley and the rate at which it shoots its volleys of bullets. The player can shoot through the wormholes to kill enemies in the other world while safe on the side and can even open up temporary worm holes to attack the its enemies at any time. Temporary power ups can make the player's shields invincible and allowing the player to relax and decimate their foes and even destroy enemies by ramming into them. And if the player is in a tight spot as a last resort they can detonate a limited number of bombs and destroys all normal enemies in one blast.

An on coming meteor shower

The levels start easy enough for any non-experienced player to pick up and get progressively harder where pushing the limits of your bullet dodging skills ending with two simultaneous boss fights, where the player finally brings down the Dreadnought that chases them through out the game and the hive mind leader of the aliens.

Phase Shift brings all the necessary tight fast paced challenging game play mechanics any bullet hell needs, while adding a fresh new and fun game play mechanic of phasing in and out of worlds, that adds a new level to the genre.

A full screen shot of the two worlds side by side

Team:
Alex Flavall: Architecture/Graphics programmer
William Jacobs: Gameplay programmer and level/enemy scripter
Matthew Montgomery: UI and general programmer
Rachel Downing: Lead Artist

My Contributions:

• Made the object factory that managed the creation and destruction of all in game objects through serialized text files (C++)
• Made the level loader that spawned certain enemies at certain times and places through XML files (C++)
• Did the separated axis collision for oriented bounding boxes and circles for collision detection (C++)
• Wrote all of the scripting for the bullet patterns and the enemy behavior (Lua)
• Did a majority of the game play logic; shooting, power ups, teleporting, shields, etc. (C++)
• Created the sound engine using the FMOD API (C++)

[Download Link] (Digipen.edu)