Welcome to Time Gladiators.

Voting

Please vote on my game <3

Theme

This game was written for Brackeys 2024.1 with the theme: What's behind the door?

Gameplay - Video

Review - Video

Dev Breakdown

Story

The year WAS 2099 and you were a Rogue Merc. Taking in bounties for eddies. You black out and wake up in a dungeon. In your dazed state gate opens and you hear crowds chanting and clapping. You take your first steps out to an arena. Crowds surround you cheering, blowing horns. You exit and the gate closes and the crowd falls silent as The King speaks.

Space Pirates have taken over a planet and set up the gladiator arena. They managed to capture a "Time Centurion" creature which can jump throughout time. So they go back and forwards in time capturing warriors to put in the show.

The player is the latest warrior they have captured and they battle to stay alive against all the other warriors.

Gameplay

This is a FPS action-adventure game. You control the Rouge Merc. You are stuck in an endless loop of warriors from different times fighting to the death.

Developer Comments

Its been 6 months since I've last done a jam (I didn't avoid them, I just didn't see the main ones on!) so it was great to get back into it!

The themes were okay, none of them really got me excited but I figured when the actual theme was released I'd see what I come up with. Thankfully I came up with this idea pretty quickly so I was game!

I've tried so many new things this time around just to see how it goes. I have some incredible voice actors helping me out and its just been a great project with no major hiccups.

I've worked on a few client projects over the last time so I had loads of new things to try and use!

I do hope you like it! It was so much fun to develop.

What I did well

•  I tried so many new things in this game. State Trees, Niagara, wave spawning, random dialogues, random npcs.
• A full game experience. Intro, loading screens, main menu, game, credits!
• I got a bunch of voice actors used!
• The story is pretty great. I love all the NPC's coming together and fighting!
• Total randomness. Each NPC has random clothes, weapons, voice, and dialogue trying to make each playthrough different!
• Multiple game modes - Story mode and infinite mode!
• Swearing mode. Its not for everyone so its unchecked by default, but it really adds to the game!

What I would do better next time

• Plan gameplay from the start. The game's shooting isn't fantastic but the story and world lore is. I want to focus more on gameplay next time!
• Book time off work! I had to work throughout this week, which kicked my butt trying to do both!

New things I've learned

• Unreal State trees. They are just fantastic. Documentation sucks at the time of writing but a few YouTube videos in and I have cracked them I think! They are so good.
• Wave generation machines (NPC waves). Once you get the logic down its awesome! and gives you almost unlimited levels which is awesome!

Known bugs

• Unreal 5.3.2 has a bug with World Partition which means the level sometimes doesn't load. Simply restart the game and it'll work fine.
• Glorb is not in the game. I apologize :( I ran out of time

Assets used

• Narrative Quests & Dialogue by Reubs
• Polygon World War by Synty Studios
• Polygon Sci-Fi Space by Synty Studios
• Polygon Sci-Fi Ship by Synty Studios
• Polygon Pirates by Synty Studios
• Polygon Knights by Synty Studios
• Polygon Ancient Empire by Synty Studios
• RPG FX Starter Pack by tharlevfx
  

Voices

These voice actors really came through and the made the game so much better. Thank you so much!

• Lewis "Lemon" Hallam - Sheldon, Frank, Benny, Franz, Walter,  Glorb
• Chris "StudleyRhino" Rees - The King
• LKDavie - Raven Blackwood