Outback Breakout

About

Outback Breakout is a top-down horde-shooter-cross-pub-management game

where you play as Dazza, a True-Blue Aussie on a holy crusade to lower the price of beer. Armed with a spiked cricket bat and the nail gun that he made it with, Dazza must protect the local pub from a horde of robotic E.M.U.S while supplying the patrons with Bad Bunyip Bitters.

Keeping the patrons' bellys filled whilst fending off the encroaching EMU horde leads to some highly chaotic gameplay.

For more information on the game's development, see below.

Prototype release

15 Dec 2023

Studio

BadBunyips

Team Size

17 members

6 Designers (Justice pettingill, Stacey Whyte, Montgomery Smith, Kenny Lo, Isaac Fraser, Jack Watkin)
6 Artists (Bella-Sophia Sibley, Daniel Mckendry, Christopher Moger, Jayk Newman, Ty Quinn, Hayley D'Arx)
5 Programmers (Zora Kerr, Michael Burford, Matthew Qiu, Itai Doron, Aidyn Radford)

Project Timeline

27 september to 22 November, 2023 | 2 months

Personal Contributions

Level Design, Pub modular system concept, Enemy AI concept, Minor UI art

Development Tools

Unity, Perforce, Adobe suite, Microsoft Office suite, Itch.io

Platforms

Android, HTML5, Linux, Windows

Summary of Contributions

Level Design

Designed and created the pub interior, containing a dining area, bar, kitchen and cellar with realistic placement while remaining practical for gameplay and navigation. With three points of entry - and the ability to shoot open more - the player may easily traverse the level while continuing to fight off the emus and supplying the patrons with drinks.

Modular Pub Structure

Concepted the pub's modular system. Walls form up most of the pub and are indestructible, forcing the emus to instead target the windows - a designed weakness in the pub's structure through which the emus can make entry. Before breaking in, they concentrate into clusters around the windows, leaving them vulnerable to AoE attacks.

Enemy AI Design

Proposed the EMU AI chart shown right, for review and iteration by Combat designer Montgomery Smith and AI programmer Aidyn Radford. My proposal for the enemy AI can be summarised as follows:

Approach the closest window structure and attempt to break in, if the player is not nearby. If close enough to a window, ignore everything else and attack it.

Smith and Radford worked diligently to, among other things, develop this AI system from the ground-up.