Squeaky Wheel
(10/2024 - Present)
Shop while you drop!
Made with my friends Steven and Chloe, this is our senior project - a wicked fast shopping simulator with a punk rock/2000s PlayStation game aesthetic.
Race against the clock while jumping and sliding around like a Mario Kart or a Tony Hawk Pro Skater! Dodge NPC's, avoid hazards, and BE A HAZARD!
​
Made with the Unity game engine.
Wheeling It In
This game began its life as the brainchild of our 3D modeler Steven. It was once a small class project called "Shopping Cart Game," and it had one brutally difficult level with wonky physics and a strict time limit.
However, the subversive use of punk rock music in a game about plain old shopping as well as the inherent fun of the gameplay made it quite charming. Chloe joined as the programmer/punk rock consultant and I joined to compose music and do anything else the game needed, including 3D modelling. We also worked together to figure out the game's mechanics.
​
Here's a screenshot of the game as it was in the days of old:
​​
​​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​​​
Since then, the game's controls, appearance, and sound have changed a lot!
​
​
You can play the latest public build of the game, pictured above, at:
​https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HJv7i0AdZNEWslano-K7-7pCqRe6t3Zt
Overall, our goal is to create a game that is easy to pick up, hard to master, quick to play, and also a vehicle for friendly arcade-style competition.​
​​
Punking Out... Musically
After listening to loads of punk rock from the 70s and 80s (think Sex Pistols, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, etc.) and making lots of songs, I realized that punk rock is more about the angsty attitude than the arrangement or style.
Though much of the soundtrack is rock, there are many different flavors of rock, and I was able to draw on my real life angst to write lyrics that unify the music thematically... I also tied it to food because I love food.
​​
My Top 3 Tracks from This Game:
​
​
In no particular order...
1. "Muffin Man," which characterizes the famous nursery rhyme character as a shady businessman. This one is spicy.
​
2. "Life's Like a Buffet", which likens the unpredictability of life to the unpredictability of buffet food... in my case, school dining hall food.
​
3. "Noodle," which compares the helplessness one feels from the stresses of modern life to being a flimsy noodle in some cup ramen. I was really feeling it.
​​​
In the future, I plan to release a full album featuring improved versions of the game's music. Tentatively, it's not attached to any group, but I was thinking it'd be funny if it belonged to a band called "Guardians of the Garlic."​
​
Though this is not a genre that requires "good" singing, I became much more comfortable as a vocalist after working on this game's music. I embraced the scrappy, D.I.Y. nature of punk music by recording my vocals on a cheap USB microphone (and sometimes, my laptop's built-in microphone) and in odd places.
Sometimes, I'd be in a practice room, sometimes my dorm, and other times I'd be in a properly soundproofed suite. I was even seriously contemplating recording in a janitor's closet at one point!
​
You could even say I went all the way with the "D.I.Y." by just doing it myself with virtual instruments and being the sole vocalist. Though I planned to record Chloe's bass guitar and bring in other people to sing, as busy students, time escaped us, and so I had to program all the instruments inside of REAPER.
That said, this project is still W.I.P., and new music along with revisions to current music will allow me to reopen these plans. I might play some bass too.
​
Currently, the game has 7 tracks with vocals and 1 instrumental track. In keeping with our inspirations, they rotate like the radio system in Tony Hawk games.
Seeing Red... and the Other Colors
My contributions to the game were not only auditory but also visual as well!
​​
The greatest of these visual contributions would have to be the 3D models I made.
​
Since this is a game about shopping, one needs a variety of modeled items to buy. The particularities of the aesthetic we're seeking require that we make the models ourselves, so I joined Steven in modelling and texturing some items.
​
For copyright's sake, we come up with new brands that are either satirical or original, and to stay authentic to their true scale, we model them inside of Blender by using real-life measurements taken from the vendors.
The base shapes are often simple to model, but to authentically texture them requires far more attention to detail and also good royalty-free images. Our sincerest thanks goes out to Pixabay for simplifying our graphic design process.
Footage, and Live Actors...?
The rest of my contributions, as well the overall gameplay, are best explained through footage. I have two clips for you!
​
In this video, you will see:
1. The arm movements I programmed into the game.
2. A few NPC's standing around. I play a cashier and a cop.
3. Sound effects I made for the wet floor sign & bouncy balloons.
The old version of this game included sprites of live actors similar to those found in the original Mortal Kombat. We decided to continue this tradition and capitalized on getting grant funding from the University of Chicago by paying staff, other students, and anyone else who's willing to appear as characters in our game!
​
We recorded footage in a music practice room with a green screen since the proper studio room was booked to the gills, but we got a lot of good footage. Steven then used Blender to turn it into .gifs and chroma key it.
​
This second clip is of our most recent build. It includes a title screen for which I designed the background and more NPC's/NPC interactions. I threw together a few royalty free images to artistically depict the gameplay.
Lastly, I'll talk a little bit about the wet floor sign sound effect. It has...
LAYERS. Spaghetti/jello sounds, a pen whooshing, kung fu whooshing, and rifle ricochet sounds!
The creators of these are credited in the Google Drive repository of an older build, which you can also play here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1JoIZ7DOmtE3W61kgyeS2cxoYRAnAZahl​
The balloon sound was relatively simple - just a vibrato-heavy note from Shreddage 3 Stratus, a virtual guitar instrument by Impact Soundworks.
​
Stay tuned for future updates! We have big plans for this game.