Trench Fever
A downloadable game for Windows
Trench Fever combines the simplistic and fast-paced nature of 90's Boomer Shooters with the historical backdrop of the First World War. Race through the muddy maze of trenches while dodging enemy fire, hurdling over barbed wire and trudging though gas clouds. You have limited ammo and are surrounded by German soldiers and swarming trench rats, the odds of survival aren't in your favor. Nevertheless, you must persevere in order to save the ones you love from certain DOOM.
STORY: Playing as the French courier Gabriel Granger, you will battle your way through a labyrinth of trenches in a desperate attempt to save your hometown from a terrible fate.
GAMEPLAY: There is a total of 21 levels in the game, including the finale at the end. Players only have a limited number of bullets per level; reserve your bullets because once you're out, you're out! Enemy attacks will kill the player in one hit but you can collect various 'shields' littered throughout the map that will grant one immunity, the player can carry a maximum of three at a time. There are many deadly obstacles the player will need to be weary of: including barbed wires, gas clouds, artillery & bombs!
DEVELOPMENT: Trench Fever is my first attempt at a video game, I've started work on it in September of 2021 and finally wrapped up production in July of 2022. It was a long and challenging development, filled with many obstacles and a lengthy break to work on the fundraiser "Chess for Ukraine". I've had to change my project over course of development to match my skill level, with the final product ultimately being pretty different from what I originally intended for this game. Regardless of the quality of the final product, I've learned many valuable lessons about the process of game development and what it truly means to be a game designer. My time creating this little project will be invaluable to my career in indie game design, and I'll use my newfound knowledge and experience to make my next project better!
SUPPORT: I know this game may not be on-par with other similar titles available on this site, which is why I made the difficult decision to release "Trench Fever" as a free game despite original plans. If you want to help support my efforts in game design or simply enjoyed what I've created, donations are available when viewing my game's store page. I won't go into full starving artist mode and beg for change just yet, I must keep my prestigious game developer dignity intact after all!
THANK YOU! Whether you enjoyed my game for its ramshackle charm or simply take joy in how terrible it is, I count that as a win in my book. It means the world to me that you had checked out this little game of mine, and couldn't continue my video game venture without your support and feedback. Please feel free to let me know what you thought about my game: if you liked it, had suggestions, hated it or thought I should kill myself. Any feedback is potentially useful feedback for developers, and I encourage all to make their thoughts and concerns known. I hope you have a good day and thank you for playing my game!
SPECIAL THANKS: As with nearly all game developers today, I heavily relied on the amazing tutorials available on YouTube to help build systems and tackle game-breaking problems. I wouldn't be able to get this game complete if it wasn't for the amazing game dev community that post high-quality content. Here is a short list of content creators I wanted to give a special thanks too:
- Brackeys: the man is an absolute legend in the Unity community, posting easy-to-digest videos for pretty much anything you can think of in game design. His impressive catalog of educational videos have helped thousands of developers of all skill levels achieve their dreams, I have nothing but respect for this God amongst men. Thank you man! We'll miss your Unity tutorials!
- Thomas Brush: he's a funny and helpful solo developer that has created some pretty successful indie hits such as "Pinstripe" and "Neversong". His videos really focus on the core of creating an awesome game as well as some tips to help you get through the development process and create the best game possible. He also creates very useful art and Unity tutorials. I highly recommend his content; thank you for the inspiration man!
- Decino: he's a prominent channel in the DOOM community that occasionally creates videos that dissect the inner-workings of the 1993 original classic. These videos are extremely informative and helped me better understand how these simpler shooters were designed, thus helping me understand how to design my own games. His work really laid the groundwork for a lot of design in my game, thanks man!
PROGRAMS: The game was created in the Unity game engine, with Visual Studios used for editing C# scripts and GIMP for image/sprite editing. The online resource 'Boomy" was used to create the soundtrack heard throughout the game. These songs are AI generated using a series of basic descriptors such as Composition and Tempo. I highly recommend checking out this site and experimenting around with the controls, it is a very useful tool for quickly generating music for those who aren't experienced in creating songs. Here is the link: https://boomy.com/
p.s. If you read all of that text, you're the man!
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