Dash 'N' Mash

Summary

Role: Technical Designer

Purpose: Monster Mash Game Jam (1st place)

Date Duration: October 1st-23rd 2022

This was a two person project created for a monster themed game jam. We used Unreal Engine 4 to create a monster themed endless runner with an attacking mechanic.

What is Dash 'N' Mash?

Dash 'N' Mash is a monster themed endless runner with an objective to travel as far as possible without dying, collecting coins and defeating monsters along the way to increase your score.

The 3d assets, 3d animations, particle effects, sounds and music were all found off various marketplaces but the games mechanics, functioning menus and anything gameplay related were designed and created by us along with the UI assets.

Role and Purpose:

Dash 'N' Mash was the first project I worked on post university. Me and a friend created this project for a game jam called 'The Monster Mash Jam' that had a monster theme. My role was a technical designer which meant I planned and created the core gameplay and mechanics.

What I did:

I planned out the basics for the game on a notepad.
I developed the game in Unreal Engine with blueprints.
- I worked on setting up character animation blueprints and character movement.
- I worked on spawning random obstacles and powerups/coins.
- I worked on the powerup functionality.
I created a gameplay trailer and thumbnails for the project.

Software Used:

Unreal Engine 4 - The game engine used to create the game
Photoshop - Used to create thumbnails for the project
Premiere Pro - Used to create the gameplay trailer
GitHub -

Extra Details:

On this project, because I had the role of a technical designer, I was in charge of planning and creating the gameplay. This was everything that happens in game: the way the obstacles and enemies spawned, the players movement, the way the world was generated and even the powerup and coin functionality. My partner worked on the games menu and UI as well as getting the game to save data in-between play sessions.

I had worked with my partner on previous projects but this was the first time either of us had worked on an endless runner. We know that communication is extremely important when working with others, so we would talk with each daily to know what the other was going to be doing that day. And if either of us would have a problem we would support each other to resolved the issue.

The development process was extremely enjoyable. I started off with getting some basic gameplay functioning and slowly added onto it. Firstly, I added the character and setup the animations that we required. Then worked on getting obstacles to be spawn randomly followed by random enemies. But not only was I focusing on the playable area, I had to create randomly spawned background scenery that the player could see. And after all of this problem solving I was working coin and powerup pickups as well as a functioning attack mechanic.

For this game jam there was not only a theme of monsters but a special object we had to include. This could have been a hammer, a fish or a tooth. We decided to include a hammer in our project and this is where our attacking mechanic came from. The hammer would be the weapon the player used to attack monsters to increase their score. So I created a way the player could attack and kill enemies and setup more animations for both the player and the enemies.

Overall, this project has been excellent to work on and makes me very excited to want to do more game jams in the future and with a bigger team. I believe the game has turned out great and I am very proud to show off what we have created.

Dash 'N' Mash won 1st place in the game jam we entered, winning a cash prize.

Itch.io Project:

Click the icon below to be taken to the project page on Itch.io.