Sunscorned

Blood serves as both Mattias's health and the price to unseal castle doors and sacrifice for lore pages. I designed an extendable door architecture (BP_DoorBase) supporting plain doors, keyed doors, and blood doors with lethal payment protection. They also have an instance-editable attributes for having a checkpoint or level transport and a key with matching fields to configure them. Placed blood door triggers preview exact health deductions directly on the HUD's health bar before the player pays.

Combat centers around a fluid three-stage sickle combo with stamina-governed sprinting, dodging, and blocking, paired with lantern Flamesurge to knock back swarming enemies. To tune contact windows, damage arcs, knockbacks, and enemy response times, I established dedicated combat testing grounds and tutorial prep levels for stress-testing AI encounters. Each enemy has their own special attacks and behaviors. I iterated over the movement and added VFX to get the desired feel that matched the enemy's body, attack, and desired feel of combat.

I meticulously tuned socket attachments, translation offsets, and rotations for weapons—ensuring the sickle and lantern feel natural and weighted in-hand when actively drawn, and rest cleanly on Mattias's hip when holstered. I programmed seamless transitions in C++ and animation states to swap socket locations, orientation, and visibility during weapon cycling and locomotion.

Getting the VFX right on the sickle was a challenge for me. I first was applying them in the way they appeared in the preview as just a small effect when the sickle was in it's attack window. The designer told me they didn't look right and that it was supposed to follow the sword. That clarification and execution made all the difference. The VFX trailed through the air and shines against the dark background making the character's attack feel much more alive. Team communication was great for brainstorming and keeping each other updated but we lacked clarity on exact mechanics until it was time to implement. There were a lot of great ideas but midway through we had to narrow the scope and spend valuable time planning. I feel that a team of this size could have benefitted from someone playing the role of project manager to finalize decisions, push a clear vision, and keep everyone on track.

Created over a one-month Halloween game jam with a multidisciplinary ten-person team across programming, 3D character and environment art, level design, animation, narrative, HUD artwork, and custom audio. This was a great pleasure and honor to work with these individuals. Everyone collaborated well and compromised when necessary. Decisions were made with polls but the best gameplay path always took priority before personal ideas. Among the amazing team, there were a few members that went the extra mile. Sai was a powerhouse of a teammate. She was always active and helping out, regardless of if it was her specialty. Bodo also went above and beyond to host the team's GitHub repository through ForgeJo on his home computer and provide a custom audio implementation system that allowed us to easily implement and test audio in the game. Overall, this was a great experience and I learned a lot about working in a team environment.