3D Modeling
Tales of Justus
Sept-Oct, 2023
Ahh, "Tales of Justus". Our first attempt at a game. The art style was going to be a pixel art 2d game (you can view the art for it in the left sidebar) where you start in a peaceful hub world with a village, and the villagers would all be based off of our friend group. Titan of Hope was going to be the ??. You would go through a portal to do a level, which I wanna say was like an arena/wave kinda thing? I honestly don't remember and this was like 3 years ago now. But you would get some currency and materials and then go back to upgrade the town. And it was going pretty great!...
... Until I realized that making something look 3D in a 2D medium is pretty dang difficult. So that's when I pitched the idea "What if we make it 3D and I try to learn how to 3D model?" Luke was fine with that if I'm down to learn how to 3D model. So I downloaded Blender, took Blender Guru's Donut tutorial, and got started modeling. You can see some of the models here before I knew how to add materials or anything. Also had no clue what "poly count" was so some parts are isanely high poly.
We also changed the plan to be an open world game with different biomes, monsters, the works. You would have tools like pickaxes and hatchets to get natural resources on top of monster parts to upgrade gear. And it would sort of be a Metroidvania in the sense that you had to go to the different biomes in order to get higher tier materials and new gear, and go back to unlock other things. But eventually we realized an open world game was wayyyy above our paygrade for now. So we moved onto horror.
Concept Art - Map Characters
Murders in Suburbia
Oct-Nov, 2023, Feb-June, 2024
"Murders in Suburbia: Late Night at Lindberg" was going to be a horror game where you and your friends (also based on our friend group) would be playing Manhunt at night, until things go horribly wrong. You start as the seeker except you witness your friend being murdered. You then have to race to find your other friends before the killer does to warn them and save them, while avoiding the killer yourself.
The map was based on a park in our hometown. We used to go there at night to play Manhunt in middle and high school, so we thought it would make a nice location. Plus we knew the layout pretty well and good hiding spots. We gave up because it was too hard trying to think of a map design for a game like this and coding the AI to do what we wanted in a balanced way.
Tales of Justus: Tower of Glass
May-June, 2024
After attempting the horror game and realistic graphics, we thought it would be much faster to go back to the simple flat colors. So our next endeavor was a reshaping of Tales of Justus, a prequel, and the events of this game would cause the events of ToJ.
The King wanted to establish a new village in the wilderness and you were a Knight in the order that was sent to defend it while it was being built. However, you were encroaching on an evil wizard's territory... the Wizard of Glass. You and your order had to infiltrate his tower, the "Tower of Glass", and climb it to defeat the wizard and save the village.
Gameplay wise, it would be a sort of roguelite where you climb the tower and defeat monsters. You get monster parts and a currency to upgrade your gear and stats to make ascending easier. There would be a boss every like 20% of floors that would be a big sort of spike that you had to grind a bit for. We gave up because animations were too difficult for humanoid enemies.
Concept Art - Maps Props
Potion Prohibition (Game Jam)
July, 2024
This was a fun one. We were feeling down due to the defeat of giving up on yet another game, when my brother's friend came to him and pitched the idea to join the Pirate Software Game Jam 15. Neither of them really 3D model so I asked if it was cool to join and they were happy to have me. Plus, this would kind of FORCE me to learn animations and I couldn't procrastinate because there was a deadline.
The theme was "Shadows and Alchemy", so our idea was that you live in a town where alchemy was outlawed and you make black market potions for people. So you need to go out at night to get ingredients while avoiding guards, and then brew during the day. We called it "Potion Prohibition".
I've never grinded so hard in my life. I made like 18 models in one day. I was trying to emulate Old School RuneScape's aesthetic which was really fun. And it was going really well!... and then came time for animations. I spent like 20% of the time of the entire Jam just trying to find out how to export the animations I made since I used an add on for rigging not meant for games. To this day, I hate animating mostly due to the exporting process. But yeah so we ended up just having the guard be the default Unity bean that approaches you. I also got to make more pixel art for the UI which was cool! It's viewable in the left sidebar link. The game is playable here and it is actually pretty fun for how minimal it is. I really wanna come back to this game and finish it in the future.
Concept Art - Logo Map Map Prototype Stamina Bar Potion List Potion Crafting UI
Unnamed Fishing Game
Aug-Nov, 2024After the Game Jam we wanted to try something with just about ZERO animations. Something chill, smallish world, and not too hard. So we attempted a fishing game!
You were going to be a fisherman in a beach village in the ToJ universe. The King sent a researcher to start learning more about the local wildlife in the area, and you are tasked of catching every type of fish for them to study. You can upgrade you gear by selling fish, and there would be a collection catalog similar to Animal Crossing, Starbound, and the likes. You would unlock new biomes/areas as you caught more fish which would allow you to catch new fish. There would be two fishing styles: Rod, and then we weren't sure on the other one. Maybe net, maybe spear.
I'm gonna be reel with you (get it?), it was clear neither of us were that passionate about this from the start lol. But it was still good experience and I made some nice modular building pieces that we'll be able to use in the future. I also made a massive list of over a hundred fish/aquatic life with their biomes, size, and other stats that I'm sure will come in handy too.
Concept Art - Village Sea Lake Cave
Unnamed Dreamcore Game
Nov, 2024 - Feb, 2025This one was unique for us. We really wanted to downsize and make a simple game, so I came up with the idea of a first person iSpy game where you walk around the room and look for hidden objects. Everything would be flat colors to make it easier to blend in (I got the idea from those stupid sniper game ads you get). We worked on it for a couple days but Luke thought it would be too boring so we brainstormed a bit more. I love liminal/dreamcore aesthetics so I asked Luke if he'd be cool with a dreamcore game where each level is like a different weird situation based off of some dreamcore image. One level was going to be based off of this image. It actually was finished. You can see a rough copy of my version down below in concept art as "Playground". We had no idea what to actually make the gameplay for this level though lol.
Another level was going to be based off of this image. I got pretty far in it and designed a whole house layout for it, you can see a rough draft comparison shot in Concept Art as "Unpacking". For this level, the objective was going to be you have to calmly unpack the house you moved into while a tornado is raging outside getting closer. You need to open the boxes and place the objects where they go, and then get to the basement before the tornado reaches the house.
This one we gave up on because it would just take way too long for me to model a full levels worth of new props just for like a 5 minute gameplay section. Especially since this game had higher poly models with more realistic textures. The house I made for the Unboxing level wouldn't go to waste though... ;)
Unnamed Arena Slasher
Feb-Apr, 2025If you haven't noticed the pattern, we hop back and forth betweem a horror/weird + realistic style game to a medieval + simple style game. So back to medieval it is. This one was going to be a first-person hack & slash game with 3 modes.
The first would have been a CoD Zombies-esque wave based mode on a map that's a raided village, your raided village to be exact. The Goblins attacked your village and you, the King, are the last man who hasn't died or fled, and you'll be damned if you let these Goblin's take what you swore to defend. You would earn two types of currency: Gold for upgrades during the current session, and Dark Essence, which would be earned from converting your gold, and this would be for small permanent buffs and cosmetics.
After succesfully clearing the Goblin army from your village, you vow to get revenge. This leads us to the second mode, Conquest. In this mode, you progress around a hex-grid map claiming land and earning upgrades as you go. Think of the map from BTD6's Contested Territory meets Star Wars Battlefront's Galactic Conquest. Most tiles would be Nature Tiles which you simply have to clear to move aroud the map. These would have pretty simple enemies. Another tile type would be Treasure Tiles which unlock gear or upgrades, but have slightly more challenging enemies. And the final tile type would be Boss Tiles. These would obviously contain bosses and would need to be cleared to keep progressing.
The final mode would be an Arena Mode that's time based instead of wave based. This would be unlocked after completing Conquest mode since the final boss of Conquest would take place in this arena. The difficulty would slowly increase, sending out more, and tougher enemies as time kept ticking up. There would be no gold in this mode to truly see how skilled you are, but you would still earn Dark Essence.
Can you guess why we gave this one up? Go ahead. Guess... That's right! Animations! I truly do still believe this one will be a banger if we ever get back around to it. It was such a good idea and seemed really fun. But yeah, screw animating. All my homies hate it fr.
Concept Art - Arena Map Wave Map Main Menu Main Menu (Simple) Mode Select Level Up
Unnamed House Horror
May, 2025 - PresentAnd finally, we've reached current day. I don't want to say too much about this one in hopes that we actually release it. But it's a horror game that takes place fully in a house (a house that I previously partially modeled for another game). You go about your daily life until strange things start to happen... and these events lead you to discover a horrific truth.
Concept Art - Map Map (Prototype)
