Dirty work in the city’s underbelly
Cryonica is a medieval themed platformer-puzzle game. You take control of a Cryonium Engineer who must make their way through the underbelly of the city known as Cryonica!
First Solo Unreal Project
Cryonica was my first major foray into Unreal Engine. There was a lot in it that I hadn’t wrestled with before and it was a major learning experience for me. The project took me a little over 6 months of working on it in the evenings, after I finished working my day job as a software engineer. My main goals when I started the project were to try to make something polished and complete; with audio, visuals, menus, and gameplay. Looking back at it now I’d say I accomplished that and I’m proud of the end result.
The work
Cryonica was built in Unreal Engine using a combination of marketplace assets and a few custom made 3D models. The logic for the game was built out in blueprints an largely contained to the objects the player could interact with and the player controller itself. The gameplay relied on an interaction system which operated off of two implemented interfaces: one to determine an objects ability to be activated and another to determine an objects ability to be interacted with.
Objects that could be activated (such as doors, platforms, etc.) would have their behaviors linked to the interface, allowing other actors (switches) to be able to call that functionality. Objects that could be interacted (switches) with would have their behaviors linked to that interface, allowing the player to trigger their behaviors upon interaction. Some actors could implement both of these interfaces, allowing for more complex interactions between objects.
Outside of blueprints I got my first experiences with materials, lighting, sound design, and I even got to try my hand at a bit of 3D modelling!
