Game Description

Beats & Bolts is a rhythm-based action game set in a railway factory during the Industrial Revolution. Play as a worker who is trying to get his job back after recently being replaced by machines, all while abiding to the rhythmic rule of the factory. The goal is to sneak in and battle against the central machine that is taking control in order to save the factory.

Team Members

Team Lead: Yannan Ma (Mayan)

Computer Science: Dylan Hollohan, Jordan Lin, Joseph Yan, Jessica Zhai

Art: Hedy Fu, Mayan Ma, Justine Magbitang, Jessica Patel

Audio: Andrew Gosse, Dinitha Vithanage

Role Allocations

Story Description

Due to recent advancements in automation, the protagonist learns that his manufacturing job at a railway factory had since been taken over by machines. Curious about why he was replaced, the protagonist sneaks into the factory only to discover that the entire workplace is now under a strict rhythm of clanging metal and humming machines with ongoing production at the assembly line. He stumbles upon a previous co-worker who also attempted to sneak in, was caught, and imprisoned, warning the protagonist to ALWAYS follow the rhythm. Upon realizing the cruel takeover of the machines, the protagonist must make his way into the heart of the factory, take down The Machine, and save his fellow workers from the rule of the rhythm.

Character Bios

Protagonist - The Factory Worker

Our protagonist is a typical tireless factory worker at a railroad production company whose name is not important enough to be remembered because he is just one of many dispensable factory workers. They are so dispensivle, in fact, that all the factory workers were fired one day with no explanation. Feeling wronged, yet curious, he decides to sneak into the factory to discover the true cause of his firing.

Boss - The Machine

The boss is a frankenstein of a machine, being able to achieve several necessary tasks to keep the factory going. With its efficiency and strong ability to multitask, it has replaced the need for human workers who tire out and need pay. 

The boss functions efficiently because it coordinates all of its actions in an orderly fashion. Every hammer, every conveyor belt, every gear must move in its designated rhythm for the entire factory to function at the level of efficiency that it does. However, this means that the machine is also hostile and violent towards things that are out of order because they threaten to disrupt the entire system. One wrong placement or noise could signify a failure in some part of the system. In order to defeat the Machine, the Factory Worker will have to learn and adapt to its rules. 

Gameplay Mechanics

Throughout the entirety of Beats & Bolts, music will be looping in the background to establish the rhythm of the game in the player’s ear. This music is always at a set tempo of 160 beats per minute (BPM). Meanwhile, the player must move and attack every other beat (at 80 BPM). The music’s time signature is 4/4 for simplicity, so that the player may move and attack on the 1st and 3rd beats within a 4 beat measure.

There are two main rules of the game:

1. Movement must happen on-beat.

The player moves successfully if a directional input is triggered on the aforementioned 1st or 3rd beats. Otherwise, it will be unsuccessful and the player character will have a brief animation of him hesitating to move, and will remain in its current tile.

If unsuccessful movement happens during the tutorial phase, the player will receive a warning dialogue from an imprisoned non-playable character as a reminder to only move on-beat. 

If unsuccessful movement happens during the boss fight phase, the player will receive a penalty attack from the boss that is difficult to dodge.

1. Attacks must happen on-beat.

The player attacks successfully if the attack input is triggered on the aforementioned 1st or 3rd beats. Otherwise, it will be unsuccessful and the player character will have a brief animation of him swinging at and missing the boss.

The player wields a wrench as a melee weapon to attack the boss. In order to get close enough to perform an attack, the player must be standing on the innermost ring of the boss arena.

Game Controls

Xbox Controller

PlayStation Controller

Level Design & Game Flow

Storyboards

Level Greybox

Boss Battle

The boss battle takes place in a radial arena around the Machine. The arena is divided into 24 radial sections and 4 rings, for a total of 96 tiles to move around in. Meanwhile, the Machine always remains in the centre, and instead uses different parts of itself to extend or send projectile attacks towards the Factory Worker. 

The boss fight is divided into 2 phases, each with an array of unique attack patterns. The goal of the boss is to try and push the player away from the innermost ring (where the Machine is vulnerable to attacks), so it will choose between different attack patterns based on the Factory Worker’s location. For example, if the player is standing in the innermost ring, the Machine will be more likely to unleash the Steam Spray attack to force the arena to retreat away.

If the player dies during the fight, they will be reset to the beginning of the phase they were in. On the other hand, depleting the boss’ health to 50% progresses the game to Phase 2, and defeating the boss means that the player wins the game.

Phase 1 Boss Attacks

Attack 1: Arm Slam

Four of the Machine’s arms stretch out, then slam down across the arena. The area of effect is narrow, but the attack happens fast (occurs for 2 beats). 

Attack 2: Steam Spray

The Machine’s pipes rattle and ring a high-pitched noise, then releases hot steam from its body. The area of effect is wide, but it does not reach the outermost ring and comes out slow (occurs for 8 beats). 

Attack 3: Spin n’ Shoot

The Machine spins in place, shooting out an array of metal scraps. With 8 turrets, every other turret fires on one beat. The next set of turrets fire on the next beat, and so on. This cycle lasts for a longer period (occurs for 24 beats).

Phase 2 Boss Attacks

Attack 1: Scrap Spray

Combining Attacks 1 and 2 from Phase 1, the Machine spits a spray of scrap metal in the general direction of the Factory Worker. The area of effect covers a wider area but takes a long time to charge (occurs for 8 beats).

Attack 2: Spinning Spray

Combining Attacks 2 and 3 from Phase 1, the Machine spins and spits out scrap metal in opposite directions. These are smaller but quicker sprays (occurs for 2 beats per spray over the course of 16 beats).

Attack 3: Metal Meteor

The machine shoots scrap metal into the air. After 4 beats, the pieces of scrap metal land one by one onto random tiles in the arena, and linger for 8 beats until they disappear. For this duration, the affected tiles cause damage to the player when stood on. 

Penalty Boss Attack (Regardless of Phase)

Since the player must always move to the rhythm, failing to do so will trigger a Penalty Attack. The Machine senses that the Factory Worker attempted to move off-beat, and thus its ability to detect the player’s location is greatly heightened for a brief moment. The Machine then sends out a super fast projectile towards the player, making it stronger and more difficult to dodge. On the same beat that the player mis-times their movement, a visual signal appears at the player’s location. On the next beat, the projectile fires.

Menu Mockups

Cutscenes

There are 3 brief cutscenes throughout the game. Their main purpose is to provide narrative context, in addition to giving the player a break from the intensity of the battle.

Introductory Cutscene

This cutscene plays upon starting the game. It provides a brief backstory of the player, helping them understand the Factory Worker’s goal of why he needs to sneak into the factory. It also sets a foreboding and tense mood for the game before the player enters the tutorial.

Transition Cutscene

After successfully making it through Phase 1 and prior to the start of Phase 2, a cutscene plays of the Machine changing form. On the brink of falling apart, the Machine becomes more erratic in movement. This visually warns players that there will be a shift in its attacks, as well as creates a buffer period for players to prepare themselves.

Defeat Screen

If the player loses all of their health, a death screen pops up. They are greeted with either the option to try again and be returned to the beginning of the phase in which they died, or to end the game and be returned to the main menu.

Victory Cutscene

After successfully making it through Phase 2, a cutscene plays where the Machine completely falls apart in defeat. The imprisoned workers in the factory are freed and are able to return back to their jobs, resulting in a happy ending.

Artistic Style

Patent-Style Shader

The centrepoint of Beats & Bolts’ artistic style is a custom shader that emulates the technical look of patents and blueprint sketches. This non-photorealistic rendering will be applied to the camera, making the player feel as if they have stepped inside a drawing of an Industrial Revolution factory. This shader would involve:

1. Colour quantization through cel-shading to limit the number of light/dark values;
2. Toon outline to clearly separate objects and object parts;
3. Linear hatching for areas that are darker than a specific value threshold. 

Together with the patent-style shader, certain objects will have hand-painted textures to add outline details on areas that do not receive outlines from the shader by default—for example, scratch marks on a flat surface. We also aim to deviate from perfectly clean lines in favour of a more stylized, hand-sketched style of ink based illustrations. Bendy and the Ink Machine (2017) [third image] is a large artistic inspiration that combines a 2D ink drawing style with a 3D environment.

Colour Palette 

Since a lot of the artistic style comes from the strong emphasis on hatch lines and outlines, the color palette will be simpler to avoid creating too much visual clutter and to let the stylization shine through. We decided on a muted dual-toned color palette for the environment. Some feedback we received regarding the color schemes is that people seemed to prefer the purple tones [first image]. The player uses more saturated and vibrant colors to distinguish him from the environment [second image].

The above concept art also demonstrates the camera angle that we envision for the game, which is in third person perspective. Since the gameplay requires a lot of spatial awareness as the player has to constantly avoid tiles that are about to be impacted by boss attacks, having a zoomed out third person camera helps the player see more of their surroundings. We also want the camera to roughly remain around the player model’s eye level so that the player can fully take in the boss’ size and scale through the lens of the protagonist. We felt that this would effectively capture the grandiose nature of the boss.

Systems & Assets Breakdown

Game Systems

• 3D Renderer
• State machine for boss phases, arena hazards
• Respawn checkpoints after each phase 
• Unity Input manager
• Collision system (player and parts of arena/boss/bullets from boss)
• UI system (boss hp, hint for user action, hint for boss attacks)
• FMOD Studio for music  + FMOD plugin for Unity

Art Assets

Sound Assets

The sonic palette of the game is based around industrial metallic percussion noises and acoustic piano. The percussive/industrial noises will be taken from a recording session done with a percussion student at UofT Music where we will record as many metallic clanks, cracks, scratches, bangs, and thuds as we can. As sound design is directly linked to the main game mechanics, we will implement the sounds largely dynamically using FMOD as a middleware software. Attack patterns will be synced to specific segments of music and will be playable in different orders depending on how the fight ends up being structured (likely determined via playtesting or potentially randomized).

The dynamic in-game music will be a mixture of fast piano lines and percussive sounds synced to attack patterns and movement. The piano gets more rhythmically active with each phase of the fight. On the other hand, the defeated music is ambient and depressing. This music plays on the defeat screen when the player loses the game.

Development Plan

Production Tools

Project Timeline

Check out the Project Timeline spreadsheet here.