Run Like Hell

Run Like Hell is a side-scrolling rhythm game that seamlessly combines rhythm and action mechanics to make an interactive, satisfying player experience

Your core objective is simple - blast your way through the underworld armies and prevent them from completing the hole they are attempting to rip through to attack the human race. You play as Uriel, an archangel of vengeance who works as a vigilante on his own time. The only problem is, without his headphones on, Uriel can barely even walk straight, but with the right tunes in, Uriel is an ultimate killing machine. He brandishes his Scythe (affectionately named Big Guy), and charges headfirst into the forces of hell with reckless abandon. There is nothing that can stop Uriel - as long as he stays on beat. The two-hands-on controls approach requires the utmost attention from the player, and tests their ability of coordination between their eyes, ears, and fingers. The player must balance between looking at enemies in 3 different areas of the screen, taking in which direction they must press to take them down, and timing the attack perfectly to line up with the music. Run Like Hell seeks to break the trend of rhythm games just being dots on screens, and requiring good eyesight without necessarily good rhythm - instead, Run LIke Hell is an immensely exigent test of rhythm, which requires precision and rewards the player with a badass, demon-slaying power fantasy.

Controls:

Hold Z, X, or C to choose lanes depending on where the notes are coming in. Press the arrow key on your keyboard in the same direction as the note on the screen, and try to line it up with your hitbox. Higher accuracy = higher scores! Missing notes = death!

Post-Mortem:

What went right?

We set ourselves up to make a game that is flexible enough to be continued on in further development cycles, thanks to our Track Creator devtool that we made for this game. We also were able to set up a great atmosphere, using a soundtrack that we created ourselves, and environments that were hand-picked by us, and modifying sprites to be our own. We were able to create a rhythm game, that worked like a rhythm game, and that was no small task.

What went wrong?

Making a rhythm game is harder than it would first seem. Getting the creator tool working was a task that took a while. We were quite ambitious with the goal of this given our timeline, as creating whole songs and devtools is a task in and of itself. We also had some trouble with who should do what, when, due to a lack of a proper project manager as a result of a team member ditching upon the projects beginning.

We also had hoped to create some more responsive player feedback, but this was made difficult by the fact that our priorities were much higher on making a gameplay experience that was accurate to the notes that were appearing, as opposed to putting flashing lights all over the screen and having frustrating core gameplay.

Major Changes

Our idea was pretty set in stone from the start, and we stuck with our original vision. Mainly the only things that changed were being unable to implement some systems fully, as a result of other higher-priority systems being extremely complex and taking a lot of time.

Made by:

Andrew Byers (Sound Design, Level Design, Programming, Game Design)

Jack Haehl (Devtool Creation, Lead Programmer, Game Design)

Riana Fox (Art/Environment Design, Animation)

Chirag Seth (Programming, Game Design)