Pyrosynchist

Platform

PC, Steam

Tools Used

Unity, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Illustrator

Roles

Game Designer, Gameplay Programmer (C#), Art Director, 3D and 2D Artist + Animator

Duration

13 months

Pyrosynchist is a 3rd person 3D infinite runner with single-player and two-player modes. Players ride on a motorcycle, steering around obstacles in the road, jumping off ramps, and throwing bombs at demon nests. Players’ actions add or subtract to the counting-down timer in the sky, and when the timer runs out it’s game over.

Two-player mode is asymmetrical, where player 1 steers and throws bombs, and player 2 leans on the back of the bike to impact steering and detonates mid-air bombs. It is an arcade-style game, meant to be replayed many times in a row, and picking up in pace and difficulty as time goes on.

Click here for the game's Steam Page. Game keys available upon request.

Responsibilities

▪ Designed, prototyped, & programmed full gameplay, menu, and setting functionality as sole engineer

▪ Incorporated and created 3D/2D assets, animations, lighting, shaders, VFX, sound mixing, UI/UX design, & graphic design

▪ Led art direction of a team of 3 artists and 1 musician with a focus on iterating and improving art style

▪ Conducted playtests, integrated analytics, analyzed & applied changes from feedback & playtest data

▪ Tailored game experience for strong accessibility, onboarding, & gameplay loop for play on GDC expo floor & later for Steam release

▪ Published game with Steamworks, met all criteria for generating Steam page and ported game for Windows and MacOS

Team

Rina Li

3D Prop Art, Concept Art, UI Art + Design

Sean Elston

3D Environment + Prop Art, Concept Art

Hanne Sharkey

3d Character Art, Concept Art, Merch Design + Creation

Chloe Cottom

Music Composition, Sound Design, Vocals

Key Features

▪ Single-player and two-player "Bomber Mode" for driving and bombing demon nest towers

▪ Single-player "Stuntdriver Mode" that removes the bombing and emphasizes driving skills

▪ Dynamic game timer that changes based on player successes and failures, with special conditions for final 10 second countdown

▪ Increasing speed, time punishment, and difficulty over time

▪ Performance-based scoring system

▪ Dynamic music and sound effects that change based on player actions and timer

▪ Character customization

▪ High score leaderboards for each game mode using friends and global data through Steam

▪ Obstacle destruction "Shockwave" ability that charges up based on nest destruction streak

▪ Controller and keyboard compatibility

Demo Reel

Demo reel of some milestones in the prototype's mechanic development from September 2024 to March 2025

Mechanic Highlights

Game Modes

The game was originally designed as a two-player only experience. The idea was to give each player different responsibilities, and the challenge lay in falling in tune with each other and learning to sense each other's timing and choices. Two-player mode is forgiving, since it takes time and practice to settle into a communication style and a rhythm between both players, and once they have enough time to practice that, the game ramps up in speed and difficulty.

As I developed it and played it a ton by myself, I wanted to explore how the game could provide challenge for one person. I made the time deductions more punishing, the speed increase quicker, and removed the need to detonate the bombs manually once thrown. This created a different incentive and motivation for players, since it became about pure reaction time and quick decision-making.

Once these two modes had been developed further, I thought of a bombless mode that could be solely about driving, no demon towers to bomb or counting down timer. I gave the player 3 lives, and hitting an obstacle or not taking a jump ramp would remove a life. I chose to include the ramps as a necessary task to hit as much as possible as a way to encourage risk-taking in driving, as reaching the ramp might be risky or dangerous, but since it is necessary to survive, players need to find the best way to get there. This too is encouraging players to very quickly analyze the layout of obstacles and the spot they need to reach, and immediately decide what path is the best to take.

With all three modes, my goal was to get players to develop a sense for subconscious, instantaneous, and confident decision-making, but on different levels. One of my favorite parts of watching people playtest the game was noticing how quickly everyone picked up their unique style of unconscious decisions. I saw the cogs turning in people's heads, where they learned what paths and series of choices were successful or unsuccessful, and changed their playstyle around what they found to work well.

Ramps

When designing the player movement, I was initially against the idea of including a jump, since I wanted to keep the moveset grounded and simple, and also because an uncapped jump ability would trivialize the other tools in the game, like the obstacle layouts and the shockwave. I found the idea of a ramp to be a good compromise, as players cannot jump at any time; they can only drive off ramps that appear in the world.

I really liked that the ramps add an element that the players are moving towards, as before with just obstacles in the road, players are moving away from and around everything. It creates a nice balance of dodging and targeting in just the steering. And, of course, the feeling of flying off the ramp into the air with a nice FOV zoom and a little boost to the timer adds to the incentive of aiming for the ramps.

Shockwave

The shockwave powerup came from an earlier iteration of the bombing mechanic, where I wanted players to be able to blow up or shoot down certain obstacles in the road. After developing the flow of bombing the demon nests to be very quick with little downtime, I knew that the process of picking an obstacle to destroy, aiming for it, and destroying it would be far too slow to fit into the current game speed.

I settled on a wheelie ground slam that sent out a pulse of energy and would instantly destroy the obstacles in that range. I wanted it to interact with another mechanic in the game, so I made it available when the player destroys 3 demon towers in a row without missing. At that point, the ability becomes available and is consumed when it is activated.

I wanted the shockwave to be really satisfying and allow the player the reward of a second to breathe, knowing they are safe for a brief moment. It feels good to be concentrated on the game and see the shockwave pop-up show up on screen, knowing you have been playing well enough to trigger it. Then, after a few tries using the ability, players learn to see what kinds of situations they find themselves in where they will need to use the powerup. It begins as a panic button, but after some experience using it, it becomes a quick, calculated choice to set up an ideal spatial situation for a certain action, either reaching a ramp or destroying a tower.

The idea for two player involving both players moving and operating as one entity came from a time my sister and I challenged ourselves to play Super Mario Galaxy together, where she used the left JoyCon and I used the right. We both operated Mario, but we each handled different mechanics. She controlled his walking, and I controlled his jump and spin. It ended up being a weird and interesting challenge, but one we enjoyed taking on, having played co-op games together for our whole lives.

I wanted to channel that experience and challenge players to operate one entity, each with access to different mechanics. Player 1 is steering the bike, but player 2 can lean left and right. So, when leaning in the same direction as player 1 steers, player 2 boosts the steering speed. But they must coordinate every moment, because if player 2 leans in the opposite direction as player 1, their steering is slowed way down, which greatly decreases agility.

I observed different player pairs approaching this differently. Some teams will have one person be the leader, shouting indications of their direction so the other can follow. Some teams have player 1 steer silently, while player 2 watches closely and leans in a direction by reacting to player 1's choices. Some teams choose to omit the leaning altogether, and player 1 will opt for smaller movements and go for tight gaps in between obstacles. And, of course, some teams will sabotage each other, where player 2 will lean the wrong direction to mess with player 1. That dynamic is an homage to being the younger sibling who is always player 2; I wanted to give player 2 a little bit more power over player 1 than they are used to.

Two Player - Steering

Breakdown of 2-player mode dynamics between the two players regarding explosive detonation and steering movement

Project Backstory + Artistic Vision

This project began as an independent game project alongside mentorship from Anthony Ramirez. The idea formed as a 2-player game about two anarchists riding on motorcycles destroying a city with explosives. After some initial prototyping, the theme developed into an apocalyptic scene, where the destruction of the world is coming soon, and you must delay it by destroying demon nests that have erupted from below the ground.

I wanted to have an asymmetrical 2-player experience where both players must carefully time their inputs and choices. The game encourages this teamwork in two-player mode and has players continuing to restart, trying to master the mechanics and settle into the satisfying flow of the game.

Lots of my inspiration came from the feel and social experience of standing arcade games, as well as music by Machine Girl. I wanted to create a very satisfying, rhythmic experience with the controls, which I find conducive to entering a flow state. Notably, the most influential song in the creation of this game was Congratulations by Machine Girl. It has an incredibly punchy beat with a bit of a quirky, dissonant, scratchy melody. I listened to that song on repeat while imagining what this song could feel like to play if it were a game. I designed the steering, game speed, bomb throwing flow, and ramp jumps around the rhythm and punchiness that this song has. Artistic inspiration also came from one of my favorite painters, John Martin, for the sublime in his depictions of Hell and apocalypse.

Title + Icon Design