Jigoku

Gameplay & AI Programmer

‘Jigoku’ is a soulslike action adventure game inspired by titles such as Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima. In this game you play as Rin, a demonhunter, on a quest to retrieve his kidnapped wife back from one of the many layers of japanese-budhist hell: Jigoku. You fight trough numerous foes and one of the major japanese demons, who took your wife.
Developed in only 8 weeks, Jigoku features third-person sword combat and different enemy types, with 2 playable levels that end in a final bossfight.
In this project, I set out to create fun and engaging gameplay by programming and designing combat mechanics that feel satisfying to the player, whilst also creating AI (enemies) that are challenging enough for the player to keep the game appealing.

Details & Responsibilities

Jigoku

Group Project at HKU School of Arts

May-July 2020

As one of two programmers within an 8 member team, I took the taks of programming AI and Player Combat upon myself. Within this project I learned things such as:
- Designing and Programming enemy types for a soulslike game, through usage of behaviour trees and custom AI tasks.
- Designing and Programming a dual stage bossfight based on concept art within 1 week only.
- Analysing soulslike games, building combat prototypes based on this research and implementing these within our project.
- Managing the build process, performing active bugtracking, making sure we have a playable prototype at sprint deadlines.

AI Behaviour

Basis Enemy(Melee, Charge)

Within 8 weeks I designed and programmed two distinct enemy types, alongisde a final bossfight. All within Unreal Engine 4, utilizing blueprints and behaviour trees to achieve interesting encounters.

The above enemytype charges the player, trying to pierce you with it's horns. This enemy was designed as a 'timed' encounter, in which you have to evade it in it's initial charge, and attack it in right after.

The other enemytype present in the game is a melee type. It is equipped with a katana and approaches the player very close. It attacks the player the same way as you would attack them. A stark contrast to the 'charging' enemy mentioned above, as both were designed to be approached by the player in a different manner, to keep gameplay more varied through the game.

Boss Enemy (Dual staged Melee and Charging)

The boss enemytype in this game is a combination of the enemies encountered in the previous levels. The boss consists of two stages.
The first stage consists of masks circling the bosstype, which appear next to the player, and charge them.
The second stage is a stage of evading bites by the monster, and hitting it with your katana. A variant on the melee enemytype mentioned above.