Project Title: Guardian Nimbus
Development: C# / XNA
My Role: Gameplay / Graphics Programmer, Designer
Guardian Nimbus was a small project practicing 2D Graphic content in XNA. The player controls weather abilities as they attempt to protect a small sunflower from a horde of hungry rabbits.
The player has three abilities that have a short cool-down upon activation. First, with the shortest cool-down, the player can target enemies and strike them with lightning. Second, with a medium cool-down, the player can place a tornado / snowman that will knock away all enemies in its path until it disappears. Third, with the longest cool-down, the player can change the weather from rain into snow, slowing all enemies on the map for a brief time frame.
A particle system and corresponding particle effects were created for the weather abilities. A simple constant rain and snow effect convey the theme of the game, passively occurring in the background. More complex, the tornado effect and snow-burst effect took some fine tuning to create and properly integrate into the gameplay. The lightning effect took the longest to develop, as it involved creating particles that would branch off each other in a tree-like structure, therefore creating the visual of a lightning bolt.
Aside from particles, the game also has a number of shader effects that influence the lighting around the sunflower and various other smaller components of the game. The actual gameplay itself wound up being very simple, and so the majority of the development was spent on the creation of the particle effects and menu systems required to bring the project to its completion.
