Arcana is a third person action adventure game about an elemental mage assassin built in Unreal Engine 5. The game features basic hitbox-based combat elements such as combos, dodges, ranged attacks and hit reactions; An elemental system is added on top of the base combat to introduce elemental damage and effects - inluding fire, frost, and earth. The combat loop is tied together with various systems, from player progression via upgrades to a checkpoint based respawn system. There are two levels in the game, a starting forest area and an interor castle level - both featuring a unique boss with custom attacks and patterns.
Tech
The driving force behind the game combat is the Unreal Gameplay Ability System (GAS for short). Gameplay tags are used for basic things like attack context (in air, dodging, combo windows) as well as the elemental system (character element, elemental status effects, immunities). Attacks in the game are implemented as GAS abilities, which then rely heavily on the gameplay tags to handle any necessary logic.
Much of the gameplay elements are implemented in Blueprints for fast iteration speed - then moved to C++ once the designs became more solid. This included things from various combat-based animation notifies, as well as the drops/pickup system and checkpoint system. The core of these systems are implemented in C++, but retain enough of a blueprint interface to make it easy to work with in the editor.
Art
All of the art for the game was done by myself - from concept art to modeling, rigging, and animation. All 3D work was done within Blender, from the modeling and texturing to the rigging and animations. Unreal Engine Niagara VFX are heavily used, often taking gameplay data to make the effects work well within their context. A dynamic material system is also used to update enemy colours based on their respective elemental types.