The Swordsman
Role:
Technical Designer
Date
May 2025- September 2025
Project Type
Personal Project
Team Size
2 Developers, 2 temporary Developers
Genre
VR Sword and Sorcery Game
Game Engine
Unreal Engine 5
Skills
Blueprinting, Teamwork, Gameplay design, Systems Design, Project Planning, VFX, Bug Fixing
01 Concept
A VR game of swords and magic, developed as a personal passion project in collaboration with a peer, Thomas Brookshaw. As part of this experience, I explored creating a customisable spell system and worked with Niagara to create the spell special effects.
The Game Started as a university project where the player used a model sword as the VR controller and an Arduino to perform hacks, however post module, we essentially rebuilt this project into the fantasy game it is today, swapping the sword model for the right VR controller ands swapping the Arduino to the Left VR controller to perform spells.
Initially the Project started as a Sci-fi game focused on deflection and surviving waves of energy, but when it became a personal project we transformed it into a fantasy action roguelite.
02 Contributions
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Deflection Functionality
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Spell System - Implementation and Collaborated on the Design
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Players have a selection of runes they can combine to craft spells, in the current form mostly just changes things like Element
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Produced the Spells
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Sword Enchant - Blade is enchanted with an element which imbues any projectile it hits with that element
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Enchanted Hand - Sends out a hand which grabs flying enemies
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Shield - Blocks projectiles to give the player some respite
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Energy Blade - Sends out a wave of energy at the enemy
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Enemy Bug Fixing
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Element Based Damage System
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Elemental Resistances and Weaknesses to get the player to utilise the spells
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Health Component
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VFX for spells
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VR UI Implementation
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Enemy Animation Setup
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Skele-Bomber Projectile Calculations
03 Project Focus and Outcomes
My Personal focus going into this project was to build a game completely under my own steam, that would be in a publishable state, coupled with making an extended project in collaboration with one of my close peers. This is the project that we have put the most time into together and the one I believe I am most proud of. Part of my focus when helping to design this game was avoiding motion sickness, something I suffer with when playing VR for an extended period of time, hence the reason the player sort of stays in one spot and the enemies come to them.
I also wanted to dip my toes into a crafting adjacent system, our spell system, which allows players to combine runes together in order to create new and unique spells. This project helped me to reinforce the skills and methods I had picked up when helping to create The City Below.
As a team we want to create something we could both be proud of, something that was fun, and helped to inspire the feeling of cool that wielding a sword evokes.
By the end of the development period we have produced a feature complete experience that can be played in VR from start to finish.
04 Teamwork
Due to our small team size the experience was unique in comparison to that of The City Below. The Designing phase was much more collaborative and insightful in my opinion as we discussed and compromised on our designs to produce something we could both be proud of.
At Points we also enlisted the help of others temporarily to assist us in areas we are less familiar with.
One of the issues we as a team ran into at times was the fact that we were undertaking this project over the summer period and as such one or the other of us was unavailable to work on the project due to visiting home or other reasons. This Inevitably lead to the project stalling at points especially as we closed in on the end of summer and the end of the project. However this also lead to a lot of free time to work on the project, and meant that we could often take a step back from the project and look at it with fresher eyes
05 Challenges
The project as a whole went well, however a few issues arose over the course of development
An frequent issue we ran into as a team was a difference of understanding in how to build systems, which often lead to some confusion and having to rebuild systems so that they would function better. This meant we had to ensure we were discussing the best method to producing the systems we wanted to see.
One of the biggest issues I personally faced during development was building the skele-bomber enemy so that he would throw his bomb in an arc so that it would reach the players head height, while the player could also deflect it back. With some trial and error I eventually decided to have a set angle of motion and to calculate the precise velocity the projectile would need to hit the player. This meant consulting my limited knowledge of projectile physics along with researching to find the equation I would need to solve the velocity. The equation to the right is the one I used, with R being the distance between the skeleton and the player. Pictured below is the function I used for this calculation within unreal. Through this dive into projectile mechanics I managed to come to a satisfying resolution which allowed the skeleton to accurately throw the bomb the correct speed. With this solution as well it allows us to easily change the angle of throw for our purposes, and to control where exactly the bomb is at all times.
06 Moving forward
This Project was important to my development as a technical designer, it did not require me to delve too deeply into skills I was unfamiliar, Instead it helped me to explore my existing skillset in order to push myself that one step further.
It was the first time we had truly set out to make something entirely on our own, minus the odd game jam here and there, which taught us some key lessons about project management, e.g. how to appropriately manage our time and achieve the best result.
Moving forward I would definitely like to further explore VR projects and deepen my understanding of it. This project certainly helped to demystify the process and so I look forward to see where the lessons I learnt from this project will take me.