About
A third-person Souls-like action game that revolves around high-risk, high-reward combat. The game features a melee weapon and mana projectiles, which require players to constantly juggle between melee and ranged combat. Mana is not automatically replenished; instead, players have to engage in aggressive melee combat to restore it.
The game is designed in such a way that it is punishing to play, with enemies that are meant to test the player’s positioning, timing, and resource management. The game requires players to be skilled enough to stay in the fight and not retreat to safety. The game takes place in a hostile environment where the player has to survive by reading the enemy’s behaviour and knowing when to press forward and when to retreat.
Project Info
Role: Generalist/Solo Dev
Team Size: 1
Time Frame: 12 Weeks
Engine: UE5 (Blueprints)
My Contributions
Smart Enemy AI
These enemies are intended to challenge the player in both melee combat situations as well as long-range combat situations. The long-range enemies will apply pressure to the player from a distance, essentially pushing the player out of their safe space. The melee enemies will close the distance quickly to the player, punishing the player for any hesitation. There are also enemies that will try to survive the battle by going into cover and healing when their health is low. These enemies will not encourage the player to simply sit back and play the game. The enemies will surround the player, hold back, and attack when an opportunity arises.
Combat System
The combat system is designed around the combination of the two, and the player is always moving between the two. This means the player can attack the enemy in close combat with a melee attack or attack from a distance with magical projectiles. However, the player must recharge their magical attacks by hitting the enemy in close combat, creating a risk-reward cycle for the player. This combat system is made possible through the use of a state machine, which allows for smooth transitions between the two combat styles and adjusts the state of the player's stance, animations, and their current weapon.
Boss Fight
Designed and implemented a checkpoint-based save and load system to persist player progress across both deaths and play sessions. The system captures the player’s current state when a checkpoint is activated and reliably restores it upon respawn or manual reload. Player data is stored using a structured data model, allowing multiple gameplay variables, such as health, ammo, equipped weapon, and world location to be serialized and restored in a consistent and extensible way.
The system was built with scalability in mind, making it easy to add new variables without refactoring existing logic. This approach improves player experience by reducing frustration after failure while also providing a clean foundation for future features.
