Dark Storm Rising
A downloadable game for Windows
You're a spellcasting treasure hunter attempting to escape a dungeon while fighting off dark spirits with an expanding arsenal of lightning-themed abilities. This is a short, first-person action game that takes place in a single level, lasting 3-5 minutes of playtime.
Dark Storm Rising is an exercise in designing and implementing a full play experience, with its own mechanics conveyance, tutorialization, environmental storytelling arc and gameplay pacing within a short development period.
The game's unique mechanics implementation, visual effects work, and level design are original creations. Static meshes and audio are from external royalty-free sources.
Dark Storm Rising was built in Unreal Engine 4 as a solo project in 15 hours.
I'd love to get your feedback after you play - I'm always trying to improve my level design. If you'd like, you can look at my portfolio at LevelsByJohn.com where you can see some of the design analysis and implementation processes used for Dark Storm Rising.
Download
Install instructions
Unzip the file and run Dark_Storm_Rising.exe
WASD for movement, mouse for looking around, space for jump. Upon completing the game, you'll be taken back to the beginning and you can simply alt+F4 to leave. Thanks for playing :)
Comments
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Really Nice project Dev thanks a lot :) 5/5
Thank you for playing :)
First off, I had a lot of fun with this. You packed a lot of goodness into a 4 minute experience.
The main things I had feedback on were on enemy model or AI variety, in particular as relates to the long range Q attack. It would have been cool if there were enemies that stayed at range and had a projectile attack so that the Q attack could be a little more useful. Other than the pre-spawned enemies hiding behind the pillars in that one corridor, I felt like most of the time I couldn't zap anyone with the Q attack fast enough.
The other thing I was considering is whether a icon-based cooldown might be better than the colored bars for the abilities. Though I do like how the color of the lightning corresponded with the bars. I'm really not 100% sure which was would be better, but it was something I thought about.
Great job, and I look forward to seeing more!
Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate you playing and I'm happy you enjoyed it.
If I had the skills to make it happen, adding more complex AI and different enemy types would be the first thing I'd do, for the reasons you suggested. The Q ability is really specific in its ideal usage so it would be nice if there was a type of enemy that it's super effective against or something. And yes, my ramshackle UI could be improved in a whole lot of ways, like an icon or something that doesn't take up as much screen real estate.
If I update this project, you bet I'll take your feedback to heart :) Thanks again.
This game is fun for me. It is not really scary but it is fun to shoot the enemies!
Hey man thanks for the playthrough! It was really helpful seeing your reactions and stuff. I learned a lot :)