Revenge of the Duzzles is a top-down 2D shooter (shmup) where the main character is a maid, Lisette, who finds herself being attacked by sentient dust balls (duzzles) out for revenge. Armed with a feather duster and spray cleaner, Lisette must defeat the duzzles before they break through her defenses and trigger her violent allergies.

The duzzles all float at her from various directions and she can shoot them with the spray bottle (narrow, long-range stream or wide, short-range spray) to destroy them or swing her feather duster around her to deflect them.

The catch is that the duzzles can also break apart and recombine into larger or smaller duzzles. The patterns of their breaking apart and recombining depend on their color.

The player not only needs the reflexes to shoot, but the wisdom to know where to swing their feather duster “shield” and the knowledge of the spawning patterns (waves) so they are not caught by surprise.

Visit the game website for gameplay video, additional media, FAQ, additional instructions, story, and more.

The design document is available on the project wiki. This represents the state of the document at the end of production. The pre-production design document is available here.

This demo functions with both the keyboard/mouse and an XBOX 360 game controller. See in-game help screen, check out the user manual on project wiki, and game website for installation and playing instructions.

The demo also includes cheats for testing and demo purposes. To skip to the next level, press "P" on your keyboard. To turn on invincibility, press "I".

This project was developed over 10 weeks in C++ with DirectX 10. Source code is available on request.

I served as lead designer on this project, expanding on the original concept from Kelley and Mike. Building on conversations with the team, I hammered out many of the finer details of the mechanics.

I developed the level spawn patterns designing everything about what spawns when, from where, how fast, starting size, and direction. As part of a difficulty changes (the option to change difficulty was removed from the final game) I changed the speed and the space between waves. This allowed for testing against players of varying skill levels more. I brought in many players to test it as it was developed.

I worked closely with our sound designer, Sela, to get sounds with the exact feel for the game. The sounds for this game are fantastic (I highly recommend playing with the sound on!). They capture the playful nature, the exciting play, and the ominous boss very well.

I coded many elements of this game including weapons, level transitions, cloud layer functionality, interpreting and desiging schema for xml files on levels and spawning, scoring, gaining bombs, player respawning, and the boss spawning sequence.

I am especially proud of this game because it is very fun.

Shelf Life was designed and developed by myself, Kelley Piering, Michael Ey, and Sela Davis.