Edvin Nordangård

A bite in the dark took everything — your memories, your life, your name. Now you’re loose in a city that hunts things like you, guided by a woman who may know more about your curse than she lets on. You’re not looking for revenge. You’re just looking for a way out that doesn’t end at sunrise.

Lachryma is an action game inspired by Death’s Door — deliberate, atmospheric, and unforgiving in a way that still feels fair. Each district of the city acts as its own level, with distinct hazards, patrols, and fragments of a story that grows darker the more you uncover. Combat has a rhythm to it: a sword for close encounters, a pistol for keeping your distance, and feeding on the fallen to stay alive. The city is hostile and answers are scarce, but there’s nothing to do except keep moving forward.

In this project, I focused on implementing systems and design patterns to support the programming team. I developed several core systems, including an Observer pattern, an input mapper, and a state stack, all aimed at improving structure and communication between different parts of the code base.

My primary responsibility was ensuring smooth transitions between systems and game states. This included working on menus, controller support, and scene transitions. While I contributed wherever needed, my main focus was on building and maintaining these foundational systems.

One area I would approach differently in hindsight is the design of the input mapper. The implementation was based on checking input states first and then mapping them to actions. This worked well within the scope of the project, and would have been fully sufficient if only a single input method—either controller or keyboard—had been required.

However, supporting both input types introduced additional complexity, requiring separate handling paths. A more flexible approach would have been to map actions first and allow the system to resolve inputs dynamically, reducing duplication and improving scalability. That said, given the limited development time, the chosen solution was practical and met the project's needs.