Demon's Heir

Download (or play in browser): https://vecderg.itch.io/demons-heir-3d 

Beewee the ninja cat was originally designed to be an easy-to-model character for a simple 3D platformer. While I turned the concept into a 2D platformer as a quick side project, I wanted to fully develop the original idea for a 3D game. I kept his basic moveset to drive the ninja aesthetic: double jumping, airdashing, katana slashes, and kunai tosses. A few more movement options (wall-climbing, wall-running, and vaulting) were added as inspiration from Mirror's Edge, but I wanted to keep the "simple but expressive" philosophy that drove my games. The low-poly aesthetic was inspired by my childhood-favorite PS1 games, while also supporting my constraints as a solo developer. 

The 2D game had a few large issues: one was the difficulty, which was considerably lowered for this game. Another was the kunai, which made the katana obsolete since it was a projectile with infinite ammo. This was fixed by putting a limit on the ammo, which could only be gained by slashing enemies with the katana, effectively encouraging the player to weave in and out of combat rather than camping them out.

My favorite part of development was refining the game-feel and experimenting with movement options. Chaining together options like a wall-run into a wall-climb into a vault into an airdash became very natural and satisfying. I also had to balance and restrict certain options for balance (e.g. infinite climbing issues early on), but those restrictions also helped encourage the player to push their limits.

Despite being my first 3D character platformer, there were a lot less problems than expected, and I can thank my previous experience for that with 3D movement and raycasting. I have also played around with 3D modelling and animation in the past, so I didn't have to learn much more to create them and import them into Unity.  Since I've made many 2D platformers, making responsive and good game-feel was intuitive for me. While I was initially concerned about these becoming issues, they didn't actually create much trouble, and finishing all the basic movement only took me a few weeks at most.

Still, there was a lot I learned from this project. I learned how to use Unity ProBuilder which helped a ton with level creation, as well as the basics of Unity's VFXGraph. The game also didn't click with my class at first, mainly due to the level design needing improvements. After suggestions to make the level more streamlined and linear, along with fixing up the boss and audio feedback, the game resonated a lot more with everyone that played it. I'm very happy with where this project is, and I'm excited to develop it further.

Demon's Heir was also a Runner Up for The Academy of Art 2023 Spring Show in the Game Mechanics category: https://2023springshow.academyart.edu/schools/game-development/students/ethan-alcantara/