Horde Hours

The game

Horde Hours is a top-down 3D survivors-like. You move; your weapons fire on their own at the nearest enemies. Enemies arrive in timed waves and chase you across a NavMesh arena, drop XP gems when they die, and every level-up pauses the game to offer three upgrade cards: a new weapon, a new passive, or a level for one you already have. The run ends when your health hits zero. There is no win state — the score is how long you lasted and how many you took down.

My goal for this 3D survivors-like was to balance player power progression with time-based difficulty scaling by architecting a modular, data-driven ability system using Unity’s ScriptableObjects. This project taught me how to tie independent mechanics into a cohesive core loop while scoping features to prioritize scalable functionality.

Technical breakdown

1. Abilities as data

Every weapon is a ScriptableObject asset derived from Ability: name, icon, VFX prefab, cooldown, range, damage range, damage type, targeting mode and level cap. Concrete subclasses override Execute — a projectile spawns a pooled MoveTo object and aims it, an aura attaches a pulsing DamagingAura to the player, a whip spawns an AreaDamage volume in front of the player. The controller clones the assets at runtime so each run has its own levels and cooldown timers, and passives mutate a cloned UnitStatistics sheet that every ability reads through. Adding a weapon means adding an asset, not touching the controller.

The whole loop is one method on the player. Every frame, each ability ticks its own cooldown; when it is ready, it asks for a target and executes:

private void HandleAbility(Ability ability) {
    ability.cooldownTimer -= Time.deltaTime;

    if (ability.cooldownTimer > 0) return;

    GameObject target = GetTargetForAbility(ability);

    bool targetFound = target != null;
    bool isNonTargetedAbility = ability.targetingMode == TargetingMode.Self || ability.targetingMode == TargetingMode.Directional;

    if (targetFound || isNonTargetedAbility) {
        ability.Execute(runtimeStatistics, gameObject, target);
        ability.cooldownTimer = ability.cooldown * runtimeStatistics.cooldownMultiplier;
    }
}

AbilitiesController.cs — HandleAbility, unedited.

Damage is rolled in one place that every weapon shares, so a passive that raises the damage multiplier or crit chance improves every weapon at once:

public int GetDamage(UnitStatistics stats, out bool isCritical) {
    float baseDamage = Random.Range(minDamage, maxDamage);
    float multiplier = stats.damageMultiplier;

    isCritical = Random.value <= stats.critChance;

    if (isCritical) {
        multiplier *= stats.critMultiplier;
    }
    return Mathf.RoundToInt(baseDamage * multiplier);
}

Ability.cs — GetDamage, unedited.

2. One pool for everything

Enemies, projectiles, hit VFX, damage popups and gems all go through one ObjectPoolManager that builds a UnityEngine.Pool.ObjectPool per prefab and keys it by prefab name. Spawning returns an inactive instance and activates it; despawning deactivates and releases. Each pooled script resets its own state in OnEnable (timers, collected flags, agent warp) so an instance can be reused without a special reset call. Death effects run a flash-and-fade before the enemy is returned to the pool.

3. Level-up offers and saves

LevelUpManager turns every enemy kill into XP, drives the XP curve, and builds the three-card offer from the ability and passive databases: owned items appear as “level N+1” only below their cap, unowned ones only while a slot is free. The screen pauses time, unlocks the cursor and preselects the first card for controller play. The save system finds every ISaveSystemElement in the scene, lets each write into one SaveData object, serialises it to JSON in the persistent data path and restores abilities by name from the database on load.

What changed for the web build (October 2026)

• A real main menu (Play, Credits, Quit) replaced the empty first scene.
• The Static Field effect used VFX Graph, which browsers don’t support; it is now a particle-system ring driven by the same DamagingAura logic.
• The XP-magnet range check was inverted, so the magnet passive did nothing. Fixed, along with a frame-rate-dependent wave timer, a save field that was written backwards, and a pointer lock the game never needed.
• Forward+ rendering switched to Forward, audio moved to Vorbis, textures capped at 1024 px for the web.