Catatonic is the first team project I worked on during my VFS Game Design program. This 3D isometric third-person cartoon-style shooter took around 2 months for our 5 person team to design and develop, serving as a brief showcase of our skills and learning experience in group communication. The game follows the protagonist Huebert, a jazz-playing cat with a magical saxophone, and his journey to wake up from a dream world. The game features simple mechanics of moving, dashing, projectile shooting (with musical notes from the saxophone), and a health/damage system utilized by the player and enemies (mice and rats). My roles in the project involved all the audio (music, SFX, production, and implementation) and some of the programming.
Programming Contributions:
- Projectile functionality
- Projectile-reflecting walls
- Projectile-splitting fences
- Environmental gongs with AoE
- Dynamic audio functionality
Programming Software Used:
- C# (Coding Language)
- Unity (Game Engine)
Audio Contributions:
- Original music for the menu screen and gameplay, both of which were heavily influenced by jazz saxophone compositions. The gameplay music in particular was an experiment in dynamic audio (when sound is influenced by player-controlled events) and involved two separate tracks: a solo saxophone and a backing instrumental. When the player isn’t using the saxophone weapon, the music only consists of the backing track, but whenever the ‘shoot’ button is held down, the saxophone is added to the mix. The intention behind this design choice was to bind one of the game’s core mechanics with an aesthetic variation to improve feedback and in-world consistency.
- I created the sound effects for in-game events with a mix of midi hits/impacts/textures, recorded audio, and layering filters. The player and enemy sounds were constructed with recordings of my own voice, meowing and squeaking respectively.
Audio Software Used:
- Logic Pro (DAW)
- FMOD (Audio Middleware)
Due to the nature of VFS team projects, the game is not available to download.
Developers:
- Connor Roberts: Project Manager / Programmer
- Thomas Minter: Programmer
- Sergio Lisuardi: 3D Artist
- Jacob Gargano: Level Designer
- Cameron Damude: Programmer / Audio Producer
Cameron Damude 