Synesthetic Dream features an elaborate platforming rhythmic adventure that features an 8-bit protagonist. The game was developed at Guildhall, in which my role in the development of this game was being the lead engineer of a team of 13 people.

The player must jump, avoid obstacles and execute actions to the beat in order to progress through the level. The game must be technically proficient to allow players to feel completely immersed in the gameplay. There shall be no hiccups in performance and no show-stopping bugs. Due to the rhythmic nature of the core game mechanics, it is absolutely necessary that the beat of the game is always in sync with the game logic. Any desyncing that occurs within the game logic will ruin the playability of the game.

Synesthetic Dream utilizes the Unreal Developer Kit for its development. It relies heavily on the Unreal Engine 3 to provide robust rendering and asset handling. Using such a powerful software suite allows the developers to streamline the process of creating levels and assets that are to be imported into the game. We believe that our development team can not only deliver all the required components, but also can provide a high degree of polish and playability that makes Synesthetic Dream a fun and compelling game.

Players experience the game through a semi-orthographic perspective of the scene. The camera’s narrow field-of-view causes the three-dimensional scene to appear two-dimensional (thus the term “2.5D”). The player’s avatar can only travel on two-axes (X-axis and Y-axis), with the camera always centered on the player. The player must run, jump, and move to the beat while avoiding environmental hazards that spawn throughout the levels. If the player is able to execute consecutive actions to the beat, increased sensory input such asaudio and visual feedback is provided to the user, further heightening the player experience. Additionally, the music not only changes in certain positions of each leveldepending on the player’s Synthetic level, but is also alters dynamically depending ent on how well the player is doing.