Summary:

Edden Forest is an action-platformer in the metroidvania style and was my capstone project for LaSalle College and it was in development for roughly 9 months. 

​

The protagonist and prince, Jonah, ventures forth to the 3 great temples scattered around the kingdom of Aesthyria after a terrible disaster known as "the Crawl" corrupts and desecrates the land, and demons appear to revel in its wake. He hopes by reactivating them, he can restore life to this dying land and rid it of the Crawl.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

The current build includes:

• A basic movement system built from the ground up including a prolonged jump/double jump feature

• Combat with a slash attack and 3 spells to choose from;

  • Lightning - A powerful spell which clears all enemies from the screen

  • Icy Blast - A radial attack which blasts everything in a radius around the player with ice, freezing certain environmental hazards and slowing enemies.

  • FireBall - A ball of flame which can be aimed in any direction and fired as a projectile, dealing damage to enemies or burning away certain environmental blockers

• 1 metroidvania style level with many environmental hazards and blockers which encourage player exploration

• A checkpoint system which allows the player 3 chances to keep their level progress when they die

• 3 enemy types;

  • A demon that patrols back and forth and kamikazes into the player, dealing damage and dying on impact

  • A gargoyle that sits in wait for the player and fires projectiles at them when in range

  • A bat which flies at the player when in range dealing damage on impact and pushing the player slightly

• 1 Boss encounter: A fiery demon which causes explosions all around its arena and teleports when hit by the player

​​

​

All sound and art assets are from free asset packs or internet image searches. I do not own any of them except for the player's health bar and spell display. This game is not for sale as it is only for use as a portfolio piece to showcase my game design abilities.

​

​

Download can be found here: https://dedgamedesign.itch.io/edden-forest-demo

​

Development:

This project began as something very different and far too ambitious. It started as a 2D rpg but in reverse. Rather than becoming more powerful and facing ever greater threats, the player would gradually lose power over the course of the game and enemies that were once easy would become more difficult. 

I quickly learned this idea would be far more difficult to make fun and ended up retooling it to something more akin to its final product. Even still, I had underestimated the amount of time things would take and ended up very over-scoped. Initially intending to make 3 levels each with its own unique sets of enemies and hazards. On top of all of this, I was still getting used to Unity and my scripting skills were extremely limited. About midway through development I ended up scrapping and overhauling almost all of it.

In the process, however, I learned a great deal  about making highly modular prefabs and far more efficient code. I also learned the value of planning, early prototyping and playtesting, and proper scoping. I like to think that by forcing myself to use Unity (a software I was far less comfortable with, at the time, compared to Unreal) for my capstone project, I really pushed myself to learn and came out of it with a stronger understanding of the development process as a whole.