Ashes To Ashes

2023

Team Size: 13

Role: Level, Encounter and, Content Designer

Software: Unreal Engine 5

Genre: 3D Third Person Weird Western Action Adventure

Development Time: 30 Weeks

Time on Team: 15 Weeks

Itch.io: Ashes To Ashes

Steam: Ashes To Ashes

In Ashes To Ashes, The player takes on the role of a gunslinger who has risen from the grave to solve their own murder. They harness the powers of the spirit world to enhance their abilities and fight off forces trying to put them six feet under again. Gameplay should be quick and the spirit powers available to the player should allow them to progress with their own playstyle.

I was able to join this game midway through development and learn how to adapt to a pre-existing team dynamic. This was a valuable time of growth for me since I learned how to find a place for myself in the game and have an area that I could claim as my own. On this team I was able to work with all the different disciplines to develop individual parts of the game. For example I was able to work with one of the programmers to implement the destructible objects that can be found in the game and make sure that they were properly displayed in the form of barricades and cover for the enemies. I also worked with another programmer to set up encounter groups to mitigate performance issues we were having with the game by spawning in the enemies out of sight from the player but close enough that they would have to fight them shortly.

One of the things I'm most proud about in this game is the section of the level I designed where the player can see a waterfall. the waterfall itself was made in collaboration between a programmer and myself, we reused an asset for a moving material that was no longer in use and set up VFX around the waterfall to make it look real. This area was a little bit of a challenge to me because the waterfall was something that was significant to the narrative so I had to make sure that I allowed the player to enjoy the story without the threat of enemies and to make sure that the waterfall was in a location that couldn't be missed.

Challenged myself to learn Unreal engine
Created effective level pipelines and documentation
Learned and utilized internal tools to enhance gameplay

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