Exstorminator

A 2D, retro-style action/survival arcade game where you fend off evil rats and pigeons using lightning! Dodge the pests, grab pizzas, attract lightning with your wrenches, but avoid being stuck yourself!

Made for the WPI IGDA's Arcade Game Jam, available to play on the IMGD arcade cabinet and online on Itch.io

Game Jam Theme: Under The Weather

Team Size

Time Span

Original Game Jam: 48 Hours (Feb 2026)

Tools Used

Godot, GDScript, GitHub

My Contributions

Facilitated a brainstorming session to come up with game ideas and plan technical systems.
Programmed an adjustable player movement system
Developed scripts and systems for summoning lightning objects at the right time, essentially adding the game's core combat mechanic.
Designed and implemented lightning sprites for animations.
Implemented flashes on screen to foreshadow a lightning strike.
Made menu navigation possible on the arcade machine, and designed icons to map arcade buttons to menu buttons.

Brainstorming

When the Game Jam kicked off, we took about an hour just to brainstorm ideas for the game. We came up with a lot of ideas, but locked in on a single-player, 2D platforming and survival game using lightning for combat.

We took about an hour just to brainstorm ideas for the game. The factors that influenced our decisions were:

Limited Time frame (48 hours)
Theme: Under The Weather
The arcade machine itself (controls)

With these factors in mind, we settled on a single-player, 2D platforming arena survival game using lightning for combat. Our artist also decided that a retro pixel art style would be best for this arcade game.

As a programmer, I focused on creating the initial project, programming the player character, and developing systems for making lightning strike.

I focused on the experience I wanted to create for the player: picking up a wrench, seeing a faint flash on screen after a short delay to foreshadow the lightning strike, and then having the lightning strike where the wrench is.

I created the lightning strike sprite animation, as well as the on screen flashes when the lightning strikes, as well as a less intense flash to foreshadow incoming lightning.

We created keybinds so that our game would work on both a computer browser with keyboard or controller, and on the arcade machine. As we neared the end, I realized that the player couldn't interact with the buttons without a mouse, which would not be available on the arcade machine. So I quickly added keybind shortcuts to the menu buttons, and I created basic images to indicate which arcade button corresponds to which menu button. I also reused this image for an overall control screen to display for the whole game.

Overall this was a very fun game jam to take part in, and I am grateful for my team who shared my enthusiasm on the project.

After the Game Jam

Controls Display: Arcade vs Web

While ExStorminator is meant to be played on the physical arcade machine, it is still hosted and available to play on your web browser through itch.io. But the start menu displays controls for the arcade machine, so somebody playing on a web browser wouldn't know the controls right off the bat.

After the game jam, I published an update to display keyboard and controller controls if the user plays on their computer web browser, or the arcade controls if they play on the arcade machine.

Potential future work

Consistent Retro Pixel Art Style: We designed this game for an arcade machine, so it only made sense to use retro-style pixel art for sprite assets like the player, level, and enemies. I'd like to change the UI text to use a pixelated font, and design a title screen that uses pixel art.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse