Passion for Videogames
I love the fact that games connect with people, and I am always excited to work on new projects to achieve that goal, whether it be in programming or design.
Exvera
Spherical shoot'em up with global Leaderboards.
Exvera
06/2025 - 09/2025
Godot, Silent Wolf
Developed in my free time to learn how to use Godot. A different kind of shoot 'em up focused on game feel and UX/UI.
Features
- Inertial movement
- Keep moving to reload your bullets
- Continuous and responsive feedback
- Global Leaderboards
Things learned
Since this is a solo development project without strict deadlines, I’ve learned to establish a consistent work routine and organize myself using tools like Trello. By relying on familiar testers, I’ve been able to dive deeper into iterating on mechanics and UX/UI to ensure everything responds smoothly and provides a fair challenge that doesn’t frustrate players.
Focusing on keeping everything within the circle was a self-imposed restriction I wanted to maintain, which made omitting information in the game or menus a real challenge when it came to presenting everything clearly to users.
Player Movement
The player accelerates while the button is held down, maintaining inertia, which makes changing direction more difficult and adds a skill-based element to controlling movement.
As you move, you generate charges. When you reach the maximum, you reload a bullet, forcing the player to keep moving constantly.
To generate the engine sound, we take the magnitude of the velocity and modify the pitch according to that value.
Menus
The menus are encapsulated within the circle, allowing interaction through hover and accept animations. Since all buttons share the same design, they all have access to the same animation.
The circle remains the same across all scenes, so its animations can be accessed at any time—whether in menus, during gameplay, or when destroying an enemy ship.
As additional audio options, when modified, each setting plays its respective sound. Mouse sensitivity and windowed mode options have also been added, although the game is fully responsive at any resolution.
Leaderboards
To implement the leaderboard system, Silent Wolf was used, which is a backend service for Godot.
Once the results are obtained, they are cached to avoid querying the database continuously.
The results are displayed in a dropdown with a customizable animation, where the audio pitch changes with each iteration.
The results are divided between nearby rankings and the global leaderboard, highlighting your name in gold. If a new record is set, a notification is also displayed.