Element Bender

Element Bender is a first-person project on Unreal Engine 4 that I developed during the "Game Mechanics" course at DAE. The theme of this project was decided by the teachers.

I hold it dear to my heart, because it was the first time my skills of designing gameplay and mechanics were recognized. This project also made me understand, what exactly I want from the games I develop.

Work

Everything you see in the video above I developed myself. It does look very rough and prototypical. However, the point was to design a game which would have coherent and impressive mechanics.
When I was thinking about "What should this game be?" I just listened to my "I want this" and "I want that" while immersing my mind into the universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender (of course).
I asked myself: "If I had these elemental powers, what would I be able to do? What would be cool to be able to do? For what purposes could that be used?"
And I had a blast just quickly and roughly implementing whatever I want. I was making an ultimate sandbox in Unreal Engine, which is an ultimate sandbox itself.
However, Avatar was not the only source of inspiration for me for this project. I also thought about how cool and advanced is movement and combat in Ultrakill. So, I tried to reach the same energy, providing the player with an agile movement system (air mode) and combinable combat skills.

Results

I like doing complex but swift mechanics and systems and let the player experiment with them in troublesome situations I put them into.

I like power. I like speed. I like it when player's skills and reflexes are being utilized.

I like it when the players get creative and come up with their own solutions with the tools I provide.

I like it when players are so invested in the gameplay I made, they fully immerse into the game and feel one with the player character.

That was the situation with this project for a lot of people who tested it. They asked "Oh, but can I do this with that?" and their expectations were met in a more spectacular way than they would expect.

Element Bender

Work

Everything you see in the video above I developed myself. It does look very rough and prototypical. However, the point was to design a game which would have coherent and impressive mechanics.

When I was thinking about "What should this game be?" I just listened to my "I want this" and "I want that" while immersing my mind into the universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender (of course).

I asked myself: "If I had these elemental powers, what would I be able to do? What would be cool to be able to do? For what purposes could that be used?"

And I had a blast just quickly and roughly implementing whatever I want. I was making an ultimate sandbox in Unreal Engine, which is an ultimate sandbox itself.

However, Avatar was not the only source of inspiration for me for this project. I also thought about how cool and advanced is movement and combat in Ultrakill. So, I tried to reach the same energy, providing the player with an agile movement system (air mode) and combinable combat skills.