Labrats!:

Labrats! is a 2D physics-based game. The gameplay is entirely based on physics. The player has a number of items at his/her disposal, with which to create a chain reaction of item interactions in order to accomplish the goal of escaping the laboratory. The gameplay in this game is an homage to Rube Goldberg machines and classic video games such as The Incredible Machine and Chain Reaction. An example of this could be the player sets up an orange to down a big three ring binder and off of a table. The orange lands on top of an anti-gravity device, catapulting the fruit into the air. On the way down the orange flips a switch which releases the lab rats from their cages.

The game begins with a short cut scene describing the general scenario of the game and a description of the main character's predicament. After this short cut scene a level with a description of the specific task for that level is displayed to the user. This description includes text that describes the task and an image showing an overview of the level. The user is then prompted to place physical items into the game world to accomplish the task.

For this game I did the following:

• Implemented a 2D physics simulation using a particle constraint system which included rotational dynamics
• Created a graphics engine utilizing only Windows API and custom blitting (alpha blending, parallax scrolling)
• Optimized sprite rotations using indexed pre-rotated sprites because hardware acceleration was not desirable