Tarian Showcase

TARIAN

Recently, I've been working more on fleshing out a prototype I started in the summer of last year; a game designed and themed around the constraint of only being allowed to use shields - no weapons!

What started as a demo of projectile-deflecting gameplay with a Quake 3 styled kinematic character controller turned out to be quite enjoyable, so I've been iterating over the art style, ranging from a low-poly, flat-shaded style akin to Deep Rock Galactic to a low-res point-filtered æsthetic in the vein of the critically acclaimed Dusk or the more recent HROT. What I've converged on is a unique cross-hatched style, partly inspired by Shingeki no Kyojin's dramatic shading and the restrictive dithering so cleverly used in Return of the Obra Dinn.

I'm embracing my limitations as a developer and making simple, low-poly, low-resolution art that I can keep up in the long run, as well as venturing into animated VFX, like the dust poofs in the above screenshot (creating with help from the enchanting VFX breakdowns of Rub Luna de San Macario @ https://www.artstation.com/srrubfish)

It's still very much in its early stages, because I'm trying to balance the building of the mechanics and the art with one-another so that it's easier to pitch to a prospective audience as the development continues. Mechanics presently include timed blocking to deflect projectiles, shield bashing as a more risky but higher reward means of deflecting projectiles and moving enemies, impacting enemies at high speed to launch them into hazards and walls etc., as well as a rudimentary inventory system.

Looking toward the future, I'm considering either crowdfunding the game to allow me to work on it full-time post-graduation, but there's also the very real possibility that I might just work on it in the background for the next few years - we'll see.

Let me leave you with a message to anyone wanting to create a unique shading style in Unity that the Universal Render Pipeline is more trouble than it's worth - stick to 2018 LTS and the built-in render pipeline.