Revenge of the Piñata

A 2.5D hack-and-slash game with roguelike elements, built in C/C++ using a custom engine provided by DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore.

You play as a piñata fighting back against waves of enemies using a melee combat system built around attack charges and a parry mechanic. Time your parries to defend against incoming attacks and replenish your charges, collect upgrades between waves, and smash your way through increasingly challenging encounters.

Features

Charge-based melee combat	Manage a limited number of attack charges; every swing counts.
Parry-to-recharge system	Well-timed parries block damage and restore spent charges, keeping the action flowing.
Roguelike upgrades	Choose from a variety of upgrades between waves to shape your build.
Satisfying knockback physics	Send enemies flying with impactful hit feedback.
Wave-based encounters	Face progressively tougher enemy compositions that test your timing and positioning.
Colourful 2.5D art style	A vibrant, hand-crafted aesthetic that contrasts with the intensity of combat.
Interactive tutorial	A 10-step guided tutorial with an animated NPC that progressively unlocks mechanics.

Tech Highlights

Gameplay systems built on top of the engine include:

System	Details
Isometric rendering	Screen/grid coordinate transforms with Y-sorted render queue for correct 2.5D depth ordering
A* pathfinding	Size-aware clearance, stuck detection, and waypoint look-ahead for smooth enemy navigation
Frame-based combat	Startup/active/recovery frame windows with cone-based hit detection and a 3-stage combo chain
Multi-phase boss	4-phase state machine with growth scaling, minion spawning, ranged transformation, and HP-gated transitions
Knockback physics	Exponential velocity decay with wall bounce, dampening, and impact damage on high-speed collisions
Event-driven augments	Pub/sub system lets 9 augments hook into gameplay events without coupling to combat code
Projectile reflection	Parry sweep detection with reflection grace period to prevent bounce loops
Isometric collision	Binary grid from TMX layers with axis-decomposed wall-sliding for smooth diagonal movement
TMX map pipeline	RapidXML .tmx loader with pre-generated per-tile meshes and multi-layer support
Shared resource pooling	Reference-counted static meshes/textures across enemy instances

Getting Started

Running the Game

1. Go to the Releases page
2. Download the latest release
3. Extract the zip and run the executable

Building from Source

1. Clone the repository
2. Open the .sln file in Visual Studio 2022
3. Press F5 to build and run

Controls

Input	Action
WASD	Move
Left Click	Attack (consumes a charge)
Right Click	Block (parries if timed early)
Space	Dash
X	Interact

Screenshots

Team — 4head

• Jun Wen
• Timothy
• Nigel
• Charles

Acknowledgements

Developed as a student project at DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore

All content © 2026 DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore. All rights reserved.