Overview
All Will Break is a twin-stick arcade action shooter about protecting your base from endless hordes of enemies. Balance offense and defense, chain kills for score multipliers, and survive as long as you can while the swarm closes in.
This is my first game released on itch.io, built entirely by myself under a very limited development time. A huge constraint was working from a shared template: I had to understand its architecture and make it my own while keeping the codebase clean and usable, since four other students were working in the same project. Breaking something in a build meant breaking it for my fellow students, which made for a great collaboration challenge while I still designed the game on my own.
What I delivered
Four systems work together to create one core tension: offense versus defense. Aggressive play earns higher scores and clears enemies faster, but the base always needs protecting, so players are forced to fall back and defend from time to time.
01
Weapon Synergy
A machine gun and a wall placer that only reach their full power when used together.
Design goal
Make sure players can't rely on one weapon. The machine gun looks like the obvious best choice, but it is only effective if the player also uses the Wall Placer, which creates a constant defense-versus-offense decision.
How it works
- Together: the walls deal with larger groups of enemies that the machine gun can't handle efficiently on its own.
Player impact
Aggressive players score higher and clear enemies faster, but must periodically switch to defense to stay alive.
02
Enemy Design
Two simple enemies that force the player to prioritize threats.
Design goal
Keep enemy behavior simple and readable so the player can understand the threat at a glance, while still forcing a decision about which enemy to deal with first.
How it works
- Distractor enemy: attacks the player directly and stuns them on a hit, pulling their attention and time away from the base.
- Base attacker: a slower enemy that heads straight for the player's base. It is the real threat to survival.
Player impact
Threat prioritization becomes the core skill: reading the screen, deciding what is most dangerous right now, and positioning to protect the base.
03
Spline Pick-ups
Moving pick-ups that can only be collected with walls, adding a strategic layer to the Wall Placer.
Design goal
Give players rewards that can recover a struggling run or push a strong run to a higher score, and make collecting them an extra strategic layer that rewards mastering the game's mechanics.
How it works
- Pick-ups travel around the level along splines, which keeps them moving around the whole level.
- The splines are drawn by hand, so the paths are deliberate and consistent.
- Players don't collect them by walking into them. A pick-up is collected by placing a wall so that the pick-up overlaps with the wall.
- Three effects: heal the base, massively increase bullet damage, or wipe out all existing enemies.
- The wipe-out pick-up also grants a 10x score multiplier.
Player impact
Because the paths are hand-drawn, stronger players can start to recognize the patterns and plan their walls ahead of the pick-ups, similar to classic arcade games. Collecting through walls adds an extra strategic layer and rewards players who master the game's mechanics.
04
Local High Score Ranking
A local ranking that turns every run into a competition.
Design goal
Create replay value and friendly competition between friends or coworkers, to see who breaks first.
How it works
- The HUD shows the live score, the current multiplier, and the high score during play.
Player impact
Chasing a higher multiplier and beating the top score gives players a reason to replay, and gives groups a simple way to compete.
Challenge
Working Inside a Shared Template
The game was built on a project template shared with four other students, so I had to understand its architecture and make it my own while keeping the codebase clean. Breaking something in a build meant breaking it for everyone, so every change had to be careful and collaborative.
Gallery
Tools & tech
Retrospective
What went well
The synergy between enemies and weapons creates a strong defense-versus-offense dynamic. Aggressive players are rewarded with higher scores and deal with enemies more effectively, but are forced to fall back and play defense from time to time.
What I'd do differently
If time had allowed, I would have added online leaderboards to make the game more accessible and competitive.
What I learned
How to work within an existing architecture. It can speed up certain parts of development but makes others harder, since every feature has to adhere to the template. This challenge helped me learn Blueprinting faster and understand code structure better in general.