About

"All Dawgs go to Heaven" is an isometric shooter where you fight your way through dark trenches, killing numerous monsters. With fast-paced combat, simple controls, and increasing tempo, the game offers an exciting and challenging experience.

Developer

• Hsham Youssef (Game Designer)

• Alexis Maras (Game Code)

• Musa Kasikci (Game Artist + Game Design)

Credits

• Hsham Youssef & Musa Kasikci ( Level Design)
• Alexis Maras ( Soundtrack, Game UI and Sounddesign)

• Prof. Sebastian Stamm (Supervisor)
  • Twitter
  • Website
• Prof. Florian Machill (Supervisor)

University of Applied Sciences Ansbach 

This game was created at the Visualization and Interaction in Digital Media (VIS) programm of HS Ansbach.

Course: Basics of game design.     

Supervised by:  

• Prof. Sebastian Stamm 
• Prof. Florian Machill

Third-Party Credits

• Walking on Dirt 2

• Walking on Dirt 1

• Walking on Dirt 3

• Reload SFX

• War Ambience SFX

• License
  

• Dramatic Gunshot

• RockBreak SFX
  

Post Mortem - Design

Hi! I'm Musa, one of the three developers behind this project. I'm here to talk about the design process – specifically the parts where I played a major role. I'll focus only on the aspects I was directly and heavily involved in.

Design

ADGTH is a narrative-driven game that explores the theme of a one-sided war burial. The story follows a protagonist who is sent on a mission to eliminate the "enemy." After completing the task, he realizes the devastating impact of his actions — how he destroyed families, friendships, and lives. In the end, he meets his own demise, receiving the final, fatal blow.

Level Design

First level

This is a top-down view of the first level. Since I believe tutorials shouldn't be any longer than necessary, I designed a short introductory level.

You start by waking up in your barrack (not shown in the sketch), where you learn the basic movement controls via world-space static UI text. To exit, you simply walk toward a light source, which visually represents the door.

Once outside (which is the part shown in the sketch), you enter a larger area where you encounter your first NPC. This NPC introduces you to the world and the story, providing key background information.

He also tells you that you can head south to the shooting range, where you’ll learn how to shoot and reload. I made this shooting tutorial optional to give players a sense of agency — but I quickly realized that most players just skip it and head straight to the final NPC.

Overall, I like how this level turned out. It gets straight to the point, diving quickly into the story and action. Everything is placed close together to avoid long walking distances and keep the pacing tight.

Second Level

Disclaimer: The following sketch captures the core idea of the level well, but it doesn’t fully represent what the final version looks like. I made several adjustments while building the level in Unity.

The second level focuses on the act of slaughtering the "enemies." My goal here was to create a real challenge — one that keeps players so focused on surviving and shooting that they don’t stop to think too much about who they're actually killing.

When designing the layout, I drew inspiration from paintball — even though I’ve never actually played it myself. Still, I liked the idea of tactical movement and using cover smartly. So I aimed to design a space filled with corners and tight cover to recreate that feel.

To preserve the tactical advantage, I made all the enemies in this level static. If they moved, they'd break the flow — often running straight into the player and nullifying the purpose of cover.

I also added two optional paths to give players a sense of agency. But in testing, players basically steamrolled my intentions. They’d take one path, kill a few enemies, and then switch to the other when things got tough — basically cherry-picking both. To address this, I implemented a logic system: once you kill the first two enemies on your chosen path, the path behind you closes off.

It’s not the perfect solution — I know some players might feel frustrated or curious about what they missed on the other side. But I had to make a call under deadline pressure.

As you progress through the level, each room gets more intense, with more enemies to deal with. I did have to adjust the difficulty a bit — for example, the enemies in the third room only take five hits instead of the usual six, just to keep things from becoming overwhelming.

The Boss

The boss is designed to embody the anger and frustration of people affected by war. It's larger, more grotesque, and fires more frequently than any other enemy in the game. It’s also the only enemy that actively moves toward the player.

Since enemy tracking in general is quite slow, I didn’t have to tweak much for this one. The key to defeating the boss is, once again, smart use of cover — keeping the tactical core of the level intact while raising the stakes.