Whispering Abyss was the Marist College Games & Emerging Media capstone project for my graduating class. The development process for this game involved putting every member of the graduating class into a single group to simulate a larger-scale development team on an accelerated time scale.
Our faculty advisor began the semester by giving us a rough schedule with several milestones for which we were expected to present live demos in formal presentations attended by members of the games program faculty.
The beginning of the semester involved a full-scale interview process in which we applied for positions related to our skill sets. I applied for and was hired for the "Lead Designer" role, and as such I took a very involved position in the development of the core gameplay loop.
Whispering Abyss is a top-down roguelite twin-stick style shooter in the vein of games like The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. The player traverses eldritch-themed procedural levels, utilizing twin revolvers as their primary weapon. The core gameplay loop on a macro level involves progressing through the randomly generated floors of the abyss while eliminating enemies and collecting loot in the process. On a micro level, the gameplay loop consists of exploration and combat. The player traverses the current floor of the Abyss in search of both loot and blood, as a given amount of enemy kills are required to progress to the next floor.
The game features several forms of loot: stat-modifying items that appears commonly in chests within the abyss, equipment that adds a cooldown-based new ability to the player's arsenal, and "Oriabs," the primary currency within the Abyss. Upon a successful return to the surface, the player is able to bring their collected amount of Oriabs with them and exchange them with the mysterious Merchant character to add new items to the pool of loot within the Abyss.
As is typical within the roguelite genre, upon death in the Abyss the player will lose all items and currency they have collected during their run. However, if the player believes their demise is imminent and unavoidable, they may negotiate with the strange creature known as Mi-Go that controls the elevator within the Abyss. Mi-Go will return the player to the surface in exchange for half of the Oriabs they have amassed during the run, making a sudden safe return a costly preposition.