Ancientknot is a first person puzzle adventure game in which you wake up being surrounded by nothing but rocks, plants and signs of an old civilization. Your curiosity leads you to discovering your ability to shift worlds- between the abandoned present and the ancient past.
Inhouse Production
Full Development, Concept, Art, Sound
Solo
PC, Steamdeck
First Person Puzzle Game
This game is a solo project for my 4th semester at the htk academy Hamburg. Made with Blender, Substance Painter and Substance Designer, FMOD and Unreal Engine 5. It took about 5 months. All credits for sounds go to WeLoveIndies!
I played around with different shapes and proportions for each of the residents- keeping the masks and horns as well as the belts.
I also tested different color palettes and then created the models and textures.
I used a sonar or pulse like effect and material paramters to achieve an effect that simulates a shift between the past and present, changing the foliage meshes as well as moving objects in time.
For the visual style I went for a more geometrical look, keeping a hexagonal shape for each asset.
I created several different modular parts to create the housings.
Key assets had an extra shader that created a dynamic white-ish outline to pop out more.
I kept the colors quite monotonous to portrait the eery, dead vibe of the "ghost town" environment while still being natural.
The player has a total of 6 energy cells which can be used to solidify objects to solve puzzles or to shift between worlds.
I created a custom fog shader for a really stylized look.
The fog is quite colorful, which emphasizes the dreamy, surreal vibe of the game.
It was also important to create calm spots- sun rays, dust and glowing flowers helped achieve it.
Block puzzles can be interacted with to move bigger parts of the world around, creating a path to cross gaps.
Lasers enable the player to activate or deactive interactable objects over a range to solve puzzles.
You can reach me basically anywhere,
pick your prefered platform:
