MAX_WIENS

⚡ FEATURED_LOG // Unity 20th Game Jam Entry

Test Subject was my entry for Unity's 20th Anniversary Game Jam — and my very first game jam experience. The theme was Timeless, and my interpretation was a wave-based survival shooter set inside a deteriorating alien research facility where the hordes just keep coming, endlessly, with no finish line. You're the test subject. The experiment doesn't end.

I built the whole thing solo in Unity under the jam's time constraints, taking inspiration from the Call of Duty Zombies formula — tight arena, escalating enemy density, and a simple objective that gets progressively harder to execute. Instead of zombies I went full sci-fi, populating the facility with robotic drone enemies across multiple types: fast ground crawlers, bipedal walkers, and heavier multi-legged units that soak up more punishment in the later waves.

The environment itself tells the story — an abandoned extraterrestrial research complex with industrial catwalks, heavy machinery, and the kind of cramped sightlines that make crowd control genuinely stressful as the wave count climbs. By Wave 5 the floor is covered. By Wave 8 you're just trying to hold on. I handled all of the FPS mechanics, enemy AI behavior, scalable wave spawning logic, and UI systems myself within the jam window.

Core Systems Built:

• Wave Spawning System: Scalable enemy spawn logic that increases density and enemy variety with each wave — ground crawlers early, walkers and heavies mixing in as pressure builds.
• FPS Combat Mechanics: First-person shooting with a custom sci-fi weapon model, hit detection, and health bar feedback on all enemy types.
• Enemy AI Behavior: Three distinct enemy classes with independent movement logic, health pools, and attack behavior tuned to create varied threat profiles across the arena.
• Arena Environment: Multi-level research facility with catwalks, industrial set dressing, and geometry designed to funnel enemy movement into chokepoints the player has to manage.
• UI & Menu Systems: Wave counter HUD, health bar display, main menu, and end screen — all built and implemented within the jam window.

◀

MENU // Main Menu: Alien world title screen with Saturn-like ringed planet — Controls and Play navigation

WAVE_01 // Research Facility Arena: Wave 1 start — facility floor clear, Eliminate all the enemies objective active, custom sci-fi weapon drawn

WAVE_03 // Bipedal Walker Encounter: Wave 3 introduces upright robotic enemy types — faster, more aggressive, require precise aim to drop efficiently

WAVE_05 // Swarm Density: Wave 5 — ground crawler swarms flood the arena floor while bipedal walkers advance from depth, testing crowd control under pressure

WAVE_07 // Multi-Level Threat: Wave 7 pushes enemies onto upper catwalks and lower floors simultaneously — vertical threat management across the full arena

WAVE_08 // Maximum Density: Wave 8 — the facility is overwhelmed, every enemy type active simultaneously, survival becomes a matter of seconds

END // You LOSE: The experiment concludes — alien moonrise end screen with Menu and Play Again options. The waves don't stop. Neither do you.

▶