Project Wombo

Project Wombo (named after the legendary Wombo Combo) is a 2D fighting game I created during my internship at Foundry10 with a small but mighty team of four. As the project leader and co-programmer, I was responsible for game design and coding, as well as coordinating with our talented artist for the art and animation, our musician and audio engineer for the music and SFX, and generally making sure everyone was on the same page.

We used Unity & C#, a somewhat unusual choice for a fighting game, but I was unfamiliar with anything else at the time. With a tight timeframe of only three months (a blink of an eye in game development), my team and I had to work fast. Despite our relative inexperience in game development and this being one of my first non-VR projects (I started with VR— like a kid learning calculus before basic math, but who needs logic when you have passion?), we pulled it off in the end, both on time and under budget.

Result

The final product is a traditional 1v1 style fighting game, á la Street Fighter, so you'll need to grab a buddy (or two controllers to fight yourself, if you're feeling anti-social). The objective is to deplete your enemy's health and keep yours un-depleted, all while maintaining your stamina. You can choose from a diverse cast of, er… two characters, and one stage! We actually started development on more, designing four characters in total with a stage for each, but decided to spend our limited time on creating complete move sets for the existing characters.

Working on Project Wombo was an experience that made me realize how much I love making games, and how rewarding it is to work with other talented individuals. It also taught me the importance and difficulty of scoping your games while on a limited timeframe. Game development is as much about scrapping features as it is planning them: to “kill your darlings”, to quote many famous writers. Overall, despite the restrictions, hurdles, compromises, and slight chaos, I'll always look back on this experience with fondness.