Movement Platformer

This project is a small movement-focused platformer built around a creature that swings using stretchy arms. The whole point was to make traversal feel good enough to carry the experience, then support that with hazards, readability and atmosphere rather than overcomplicating the design.

It was useful as a crossover project because it pulled together gameplay feel, coding, shader work, VFX, Blender asset work and visual design in one small prototype.

What I built

• Implemented swinging mechanics and iterated on the feel until they supported fast, expressive traversal.
• Built supporting traversal systems including slingshot aids, hazards and camera behaviour.
• Developed character and enemy animation using IK-driven setups and physics-led motion.
• Built out visual atmosphere with fog, clouds, VFX, shader work and environment dressing.
• Made tools and shaders to support level dressing, including custom grass placement along splines.

What I gained from this project was a better feel for how code, art and design all meet in movement-heavy games. Good traversal is not just a controller problem; it depends on animation, readability, obstacle design, camera behaviour and visual feedback all working together.

Later snapshot

• Pushed building visuals, emission work and atmospheric effects so the world felt more coherent.
• Added bobbit-worm enemies and a small flying creature, which gave me more practice with Blender modelling, UVs, rigging and IK-based animation.
• Expanded the cloud and environment shader work to improve depth and mood.

Further iteration

• Added more environment VFX and shader work, including smoke, distortion and volumetric cloud passes.
• Built the spline-driven grass placement tool to support a new hazard direction more cleanly.
• Fixed tricky swing-collision and arm-retraction issues so traversal behaved more reliably on complex geometry.