Carnage Carnival

  Carnage Carnival is a 3D survival horror collection game taking place in a haunted carnival.  A ghoulish clown is holding the player hostage at his prize booth until the player collects all the prizes.  To collect these prizes, the player must complete a variety of levels found within the carnival.  Each level contains tickets for the player to pick up, which can then be exchanged for prizes at the prize booth.  The levels take place in various different sections of the carnival, such as the  maze.  Each of them are designed to frighten the player and contain a new mechanic for the player to navigate.  The player must collect as many tickets as they can and reach the end of the level before they become too frightened to continue, lest they become trapped in the clown’s carnival.

Instructions:

Use WASD to move

Move your camera using the mouse

Press E to open doors in the Haunted House

Press the left mouse key to turn your flashlight on and off in the Tunnel of Love

Press the left mouse key to buy from the shop

Press escape to return to the hub

Pick up keys and tickets by walking into them

Press the left mouse key to shoot the plasma gun in the Haunted House

Post-Mortem:

  Creating Carnage Carnival was a complicated process from start to finish.  Each member of our team faced unique challenges and worked to adapt to them to create the best game possible.  A few of the things we originally planned on including became increasingly unrealistic as the project progressed.  Fortunately, we were able to come up with exciting new replacements for anything we missed.  For example, our maze level was originally intended to be a mirror maze.  After this idea caused major lag issues for players, the maze was entirely transformed.  Instead of mirrors, multicolored walls were used to make every area feel distinct.  Mysterious blood stains patterned new places, and startling surprises such as jack-in-the-boxes and moving walls of arms were strategically placed throughout the environment.  The maze even saw the addition of new, spinning sections of walls meant to disorient the player and slow them, and even their enemies, down.  These changes expanded the maze into something more detailed and complicated than we had originally anticipated.  

    For every script written for Carnage Carnival, there were several bugs that needed to be worked out.  We ran into countless strange errors during development, including things such as boats spinning wildly out of control, ghouls getting stuck inside of walls, players becoming invincible to attacks,  and objects falling straight through the floor.  Our programming team, Alexandra Barrett and Tabitha Troup, worked tirelessly with help from our producer, Danielle Anders, to fix these errors.  From these errors, we learned a number of different things both about Unity and game development as a whole.  When it came to Unity, we learned plenty more about collisions, events, culling masks, object instantiation and transformations.  When it came to game design, we learned that open communication and teamwork are the best ways to overcome any obstacle in the creation process.  Having a reliable team that was dedicated to creating a great project was the major force that allowed us to succeed.  

    Both of our final two teammates, Jacob Kasparian and Ashley Zimmerman, played large roles in the completion of our game as well.  Jacob, our level designer, created the level layouts seen in Carnage Carnival.  He planned out impressive areas such as the Haunted House’s meat locker and the sprawling expanse of the Maze.  This effectively provided the rest of the team with the game’s backbone, which was then enhanced through code and artwork to breathe life into the gaming experience.  Ashley, our artist, provided that artwork as well as the sounds heard in the carnival.  Every bone-chilling growl and twisted tune was created by her.  Her artwork can be seen on every menu in the game, as well as on the game’s UI.  When asked what they learned from this experience, Ashley and Jacob said that time management was a major part of any video game creation.  Without properly scheduling due dates and work times, a project can quickly fall apart.  

    Despite having to cut many of our original plans, such as the rollercoaster level which ended up being more boring than frightening, and spending hours fixing the bugs that arose in this game, we believe our successes outweigh our struggles.  There are many portions of this game that we are very proud of that worked better than we had expected them to.  A good example of this would be the jumpscares and chain effects from the Haunted House.  Testing that level has always been the most exciting part of this game, as many of our jump scares still spook us despite us already knowing that they’re there.  We particularly enjoy visiting the theatre and meat locker sections of this level.  The jarring disappearance of the restrained Pierro and the gentle jingling of the chains the player can push through always makes our hair stand on end.  We believe Carnage Carnival turned out to be a certifiably scary yet fun gaming experience and hope you enjoy playing.  

   

Credits

• Alexandra Barrett:  Programming, bug fixing
• Tabitha Troup:  Programming, bug fixing
• Danielle Anders:  Producing, supplementing code/bugfixing
• Ashley Zimmerman:  Art and sound
• Jacob Kasparian:  Level Design