Elf Rush

Overview

Elf Rush came out of a Christmas-break game jam when I needed a clean reset from production complexity and wanted to prove to myself that I could ship quickly. The plan was simple: small scope, fresh code, finish fast, and get it live.

Core gameplay was an endless runner with a shape-shifting character system. The elf ran continuously and could jump, the bird could fly but would die on frontal collisions, and the turtle could not jump but could stop and pass through tighter spaces. That gave each form a clear purpose and created fun split-second decisions.

Under the hood, Elf Rush had 52 different biomes that acted like modular map sections. Each biome had a start door and end door, and the generation system lined those doors up so transitions stayed playable. There were always 3 biomes generated ahead of the player to keep the run smooth and avoid visible loading stutters.

The end door of the biome the player is currently in aligns with the next biome's start door. There might be other entrances into the next biome, but there is always at least one safe entrance large enough for the player to pass through cleanly. Building those consistency rules taught me a lot about level safety constraints in procedural systems.