Lab Escape - Damiano Tagliaferri

Lab Escape is a turn-based tactics game made for Boss Rush Jam 2024. Features an aesthetic inspired by TV serie “Stranger Things” and games like “Control” and “Alan Wake”.

Role: Project Manager - Designer - Lead Developer
Company: <Game Jam>
Platforms: PC
Work time: 1 month

My contributions

Design and concepting

Gameplay programming

Utility-based AI

Design and concepting

I co-designed the game mechanics, gathered references and drew concept art for all characters. The production for this project was managed in a Miro board, that contains all my sketches, as well as a general design document and project roadmap. Box grab drop

Gameplay

A* navigation for unit movement validation
Set of different actions and reactions for the cast of characters
UI showing gameplay hints and characters stats

The FSM library I developed to manage turns, player inputs and UI is available in its own repo under MIT license. Here is a usage example:

private StateMachine<State> sm = new StateMachine<State>(State.FirstState);

sm.Configure(State.FirstState)
    .SubstateOf(State.BaseState)
    .OnEntry(() => { /* Entered */ })
    .OnProcess(() => { /* Processing... */ })
    .OnExit(() => { /* Exited */ })
    .AddTransition(State.OtherState, () => firstCondition())
    .AddTransition(State.AnotherState, () => secondCondition());

Utility based AI

Modular score calculation methods, trying to achieve goals like: get close to attack targets, avoid attack trajectories, avoid getting surrounded.
It is possible to create multiple AIs composing score calculation methods.