Lord Of the grave info

Duration: 2 Months Planned (Current: 2 weeks completed)

Team: None

Size: Solo Project

Tools: Unreal Engine, Photoshop


Game Overview 

Lord of the Grave is a isometric cast and blast dungeon crawl style game, where the player controls a lich wizard trying to escape from the graveyard he's been confined in. Using magical spells to defeat zombies, ghouls, skeletons and more, collects the souls of your enemies to power and and grow, and find a way to escape the grave that binds you.

What I've Done

  • Fireball Attacks
  • Trigger Events
  • Player Movement and Abilities
  • Enemy Abilities, Movement and Animation Graphs
  • Enemy AI
  • Item Pickups
  • Doors opening, text popups, etc.

Technical Work

So far on Lord of the Grave, there are a few key abilities that I've worked on for players to engage with.

     Fireball

  • Summoned via right click
  • Rotates around player, following them wherever they go
  • Damages enemies they contact
  • On left click, fires from current location in direction of mouse, maintaining height while travelling off screen
  • Explodes on contact with surfaces, damages enemies
  • Self Regulating (new fireballs will not spawn until previous ones are used up)

     Enemy AI

Planning for 3 boss fights, each with different sets of attacks and abilities. One boss (ghoul) is nearing completion.

The enemies use an AI tree and blackboard (the Unreal toolset) to to select from events to do based on conditions in the game. I have also set up animation graphs for them to select animations based on in game states.

Ghoul

  • Approaches player if it is far away
  • Checks if abilities are on cooldown. If they are, it will attack the player in melee (arm swing)
  • If the boss's ability is off cooldown, it will create a large explosion around itself, giving the player a few seconds to move away.
  • When defeated, drops an important item for the player to progress

Further AI coming Soon

     Health Bars

The game features health bars that are in the world rather than as part of the HUD. The player health bar follows the player behind them, always facing the camera and sitting near the ground. Small enemies do not need healthbars as they die in a couple of hits. Boss enemies have health bars that are circles under their feet, depleting and flashing red as they empty.