“The evil pharmaceutical mogul Ultrachem has been tampering with a ton of top secret genetic projects lately. Everything seemed to be going as planned until the planet was invaded by the Gorgonaut Empire! With a healthy dose of gamma rays, the laboratories test gecko, who has been undergoing less-than-kind experiments lately, decides to exact their revenge!
You’re deemed too high of a threat to the city of Metroville and you’ll have 2 minutes until the city is completely nuked. The frat alien sect known as the UFBro’s are on Lunar Break and they’re screwing up the planet just for kicks (and a ton of views on GlikGlok). They’ll deliver various mutated weapons like laser guided mallets and boxing glove guns to up the ante, as well as delicious snacks. Destroy buildings, cars, and everything else as you absolutely RAGE!”
You can also follow this project on Instagram and join our Discord server!
You’ll fight your way through a series of levels, some randomly selected, destroying and eating enough stuff to get the score needed to advance to the next level. There are rogue-like elements in the sense of the item collection per level, unlocking lore to read out of game in the “Logbook,” as well rounds of boss fights and secret unlockables depending on your actions.
This has been a solo project for almost the entirety of development. I’ve had some help from my friends with extra modeling, texturing, or even making some music. The project was born out of a college game jam. I really fell in love with idea of it all enjoyed working on it, learning exciting new XR skills via hours of tutorials.
This game was built on the OpenXR system so it should work with most Quest, the Rift, HTC Vive, and maybe even the Index, although I haven’t had the chance to test everything. The only controls necessary for gameplay are the grip and trigger, for picking up/holding objects and firing them, keeping accessibility in mind while designing all these kooky snacks and weapons.
Within the VR genre, there are many cartoonish beat ’em up or kaiju-destruction games, but I think Monster Mash has some really fun differentiators. At it’s core, it’s a rogue-like, but there are numerous types of items and snacks that have different functions, give you abilities, or modify other aspects of the level. In collecting these items, it unlocks lore you can read about out of game to learn more about the goofy little world I’ve been crafting.
While development has been slow because of my involvement with other projects, I would love to continue working on this project and have a ton of planned content and ideas for fleshing out mechanics. I have a handful of different styled levels mapped out and a laundry list of wacky combinations of items and food. I have several cutscenes, silly animations, and voice work planned for a number of characters eventually.
The scope of this game is pretty large for one person and I didn’t realize that at the beginning of the development cycle. Because of this, I opted to release in Early Access on Steam mid-2024 with a free demo. A majority of the core systems are in place and at least several weapons/snacks of every type are available to experiement with. There is a plethora of Steam Achievements and the framework for other secret unlockable content. Unfortunately, I’ve put a bit of a pause on this at this point until I have more time/funding to lean on, but I certainly don’t consider it an abandoned project.
If you happen to play the free demo on Steam, I hope you enjoy what I have made so far and I would love to hear your thoughts! And remember… They’re always watching…
