N.DEKA:X

The land has been overrun by a primal alien force. Equip your astro-suit and liberate your planet from the ancient cybernetic creatures overrunning cities. Charge through shifting levels and exterminate complex waves of drones with a variety of weapons, and demolish the lethal bosses threatening humanity.

Mechanics

• Dynamic Angles:
  • The stage shifts between top-down twin-stick shooting and side-scrolling horizontal shooting segments.
• Weapons:
  • Glowing enemies drop one of various special weapon types that are stored in your holster upon pickup. You can freely switch between them.
  • Picking up a weapon with a full holster overrides the currently equipped weapon (you always have access to the base gun).
• Health and Damage-Blocking:
  • Weapons in your holster also act as your shield in NDX. Your currently equipped special weapon is destroyed upon taking a hit from enemies.
  • When damaged while the base weapon is equipped, the first weapon in the holster is destroyed.
  • Taking damage with no weapons in the holster results in a lost life.
• Precision Dodging:
  • Hold LShift to slow your movement and view the player hitbox for weaving through tough barrages of bullets. 
• Scoring and Combo Chains:
  • Destroying enemies increases the combo count and fills the combo meter. Higher combo count = higher score multiplier for destroying enemies. The combo resets when the meter runs out or you lose a life. Try to optimise your combo chain to maximize your score.
  • Defeating bosses within a certain amount of time rewards a time bonus multiplier to your score depending on how quickly it was destroyed. Taking too long will result in no bonus multiplier.
  • A 'remain bonus' is applied to your score depending on how many lives are kept by the end of the stage.
  • Final score upon completing the stage is affected by the game difficulty selected.
• Difficulty Options and Player Variants:
  • There are 5 difficulty options to pick from for various skill levels
  • Freeplay difficulty allows the less skilled to play through the whole game without the fear of a game over.
  • 3 player variants are available to play as which modify your life count and maximum weapon slots, letting you play with stats suited to your style.
• Online Leaderboards:
  • Submit your high scores to global leaderboards to compare your ranking against other players for each difficulty.
  • Even if you get a game over, your score can still be saved and shared.
• Gallery
  • Get a close view of NDX's in-game models, concept art, development diagrams, and promotional material in this bonus mode.
  • Review in-depth strategies for each boss enemy.

Controls

• WASD - Move
• Mouse Movement - Aim (top-down mode only)
• Left Click - Fire
• LeftShift - Slow player movement and display the hitbox
• Q/E or Scroll Wheel- Change weapon
• 1 to 7 - Select weapon slot
• ESC - Pause

Weapons

• Base: Your starting weapon that can't be lost. Fires a single rapid shot.
• Plasma: Fires a shot that explodes into an area of lasting sparks upon hit.
  
• Void: Requires charging to shoot and pierces through enemies with powerful damage.
  
• Heat: A rapid-fire spread gun, can burn out if used for too long and will need too cool down.
  
• Photon: Launches a light ray that pierces through enemies and deals repeating damage to ones that cross the shot's path.
  
• Magnet: Rare weapon, a twin machine gun that fires rapid bullets that orbit towards enemies.

Credits

NDX was inspired by unique shooters like Einhänder, Furi and Nier Automata and was created to be an exciting game experience by a group of talented university students.

• Programming:
  • Amin Khan
  • Eashvar Kumaresen
  • Jonathan Braine
  • Noah Threlfall-Holmes
• Design:
  • Andrei Aider Cană
  • Mel Atkinson
• Art:
  • Jack Stalker
  • Jing Ru Lim
  • Silvia Andreea Patraulea
  • Waewwanjit Chawanwit
• Animation:
  • Tianyi Li
• Stage music by Grand_Project via Pixabay

As per the academic specification for this project we were allowed to outsource assets for this project, which we did only for the audio of the game. The following are the various sources for the game's music and sound effects: Einhander; Super Bomberman R; Ikaruga; Kirby's Return to Dreamland; The World Ends With You; RPG Maker MV; No Straight Roads; Touhou Luna Nights; DoDonPachi True Death Exa Arcadia.