MYSTIC WARRIOR

Gameplay

Project Details

What’s Unique?

• Indo-Fantasy world steeped in Indian mythology, epic landscapes, and mythical creatures
• Kalaripayattu-inspired fluid, dynamic combat styles
• Elemental Magic with panchabootha combo attacks — fire, water, earth, wind, space
• Strategic Exploration through treacherous environments, puzzles, and hidden secrets
• Deep Lore and immersive storytelling with epic quests
• Precise Combat requiring timing, skillful dodging, and deliberate strategy

My Role

As Game Developer focused on core mechanics, I helped shape combat feel, elemental systems, and player interaction — building toward fluid Kalaripayattu-inspired action and soulslike challenge within a four-person team mentored by APlus Associates.

Core Mechanics

• Owned the player controller combat stack linking locomotion, attack buffers, and hit-response into a readable soulslike loop.
• Implemented frame-sensitive input buffering, iframe windows on dodge, and commit/cancel rules for attack strings inspired by Kalaripayattu timing.
• Wired objective hooks and interactables through a lightweight quest/event bus toward environmental gates and the Hiranyaksha confrontation.
• Coordinated with AI, animation, and VFX so montage notifies, damage traces, and cam shakes stayed consistent across chapters.

Combat Systems

• Structured combat as a layered state machine (idle / attack / block / dodge / hitstun) with animation notifies driving damage volumes.
• Authored weapon and affinity data for elemental damage types — water, fire, wind, earth — feeding resistance tables and combo branches.
• Tuned poise/stagger style punish windows so high-risk exchanges rewarded skillful dodging over button mashing.
• Balanced encounter pacing against soulslike difficulty curves and chapter boss checkpointing toward the final Asura fight.

Magic & Exploration

• Helped shape the panchabootha five-element magic graph — fire, water, earth, wind, space — as ability tags with cooldown/cost constraints.
• Supported spell casting, environment object manipulation, and combat-enhancing elemental modifiers via shared ability interfaces.
• Prototyped elemental combo chains and spatial puzzles that require affinity switches across interconnected spaces.
• Tied exploration rewards (lore fragments, shortcuts, gear) to elemental interactables and gated traversal verbs.

Tools & Technologies

• Unreal Engine 5 — combat FSMs, damage traces, montage notifies, element tags
• Blender — asset iteration and environment blockouts
• Rokoko Studio — motion capture for martial combat authenticity
• Cascadeur — animation refinement and contact timing cleanup
• Git / Confluence / Jira / Trello / Discord — versioning and production

References

1. FromSoftware — Dark Souls / Elden Ring combat literacy: commit frames, readability, and high-risk punish design.
2. Nystrom, R. Game Programming Patterns — hierarchical FSMs and component boundaries for combat modes.
3. Epic Games — Unreal Engine Animation Notifies, Root Motion, and Trace workflows for contact-driven melee.
4. Swink, S. Game Feel — feedback, timing windows, and responsive control for martial action systems.
5. Kalaripayattu martial literature / performance references — stance switching, flow, and retaliatory timing inspiration.

Milestones

• Designing · Q1 2024

  Focus on level design, story narration, and narrative design as a whole.

• Prototyping · Q2 2024

  Finish implementation and prototyping of core gameplay systems.

• Play Testing · Q3

  Full bug pass and gameplay fixes from structured playtesting.

• Upgrading · Q2 2025

  Optimize old systems, add functionality, and improve performance from player feedback.

• Test Launch · Q4 2025

  Prepare release candidate and test launch build.