Bedlam Breakout

Bedlam Breakout is a platforming game I developed in Unity for a class project. The game puts you in the shoes of a wrongfully accused asylum patient, as which you need to empathize with the other patients who are in the same position as you. Each time you empathize, you gain their ability, adding to your arsenal of powers which you use to ultimately escape from the asylum.

I handled all the programming, game mechanics, and dialogue system. My team and I only had 2 months to work on it and it taught me that working fast and iterating quickly is very important for meeting deadlines.

Implemented gameplay mechanics and character abilities using GML

The game used physics based movement to its benefit, by creating gameplay that felt smooth and satisfying to control it really brought out the best in our abilities and made it such a joy to playtest.

This game taught me the value of rapid prototyping and iteration. I built the core movement and dialogue system in one week, then spent the next two weeks playtesting and tweaking values to get it to feel just right. I learned that "game feel" is often more important than feature count — the satisfying movement and abilities as well as responsive controls matter very much.

I also learned to embrace scope creep carefully. As I was quite slow to get started with my team, it forced us to consider what was critically important to complete as much of the game as possible with very little time together.

Key technical features:

**Physics-Based Gameplay**: Custom 2D physics with velocity clamping to prevent infinite speed acceleration.

**Power-Up Framework**: Scriptable Object-based power-up system with duration and cooldown timers, stackable effects, and visual indicators. Includes modular activation/deactivation methods for easy expansion.

**Camera Control**: Custom camera movement for closer zoom in when in dialogue made conversations more engaging, then zooming it out for gameplay gave the player a better overview and exploration potential.