Revenant's Hand

Battle ghoulish creatures!
Make dark deals with your patron, the Revenant...

Inspiration

Revenant's were heavily inspired by games like Dicey Dungeon, Persona 5, and Deadlock. However, we wanted to build a game with a unique visual aesthetic that was especially separated from more anime-esque RPGs. Inspired by the Halloween vibe of upcoming decorations, we decided to take a distinctly unsettling orange black style. We loved how the striking silhouette of the Hidden King from Deadlock contrasted with his surrounding. Mimicking this, our games creatures were designed purely to have interesting and spooky outlines, save for their ghoulish orange eyes! The gameplay was designed to be a brutal mix of gambling and devilish dice combos with roguelike card swapping.

What it does

We built a short rougelike game with three screens where you can build a strategic set of cards, and three horror-themed fights! Playing through the game takes around 5 minutes, and showcases an original orange black horror aesthetic. Players will have to gamble strategically, and make the most of their patron's offers to make it through! Each turn, players battle eldritch creatures by putting their dice into cards to make combos and attack!

How we built it

All art assets were hand drawn in Krita! We used the Godot game engine to build up the code base. The game is coded in C# and GD script. The dice were modeled in Blender, and use a physics simulation to determine their value, along with sub viewports to render on a 2D screen! Sound effects and music were found online from open use sources.

Challenges we ran into

The most difficult part of development was undoubtably the visual style of the game and the time crunch of developing fun gameplay in such a short time span. The latter challenge was tackled with smart, modular card code that allowed strategy mechanics to easily be programmed and changed. The former took the most development time. We tackled developing a unique style with many iterations and continuous feedback from each team member. Developing the style mainly consisted of a strong initial vision, and working to develop a cohesive set of assets to fulfill it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are incredibly proud to have built a fully playable game in such a short amount of time! While the game is still rough around the edges in some respect, it was built in a fraction of the time that normal game jams feature. Not only that, but we love the silhouette-driven and powerful aesthetic we were able to build! One of our goals going into the project was to build a distinctive feel for UI and we are super pleased with the results.

What we learned

We learned a lot about working together as a team. We found the most success when we encouraged each other, and allowed each other to execute their unique idea of the shared vision. In terms of specific skills, our art team learned a lot about Krita, as this was their first big project using the software. Our lead programmer also learned a lot about developing modular turn-based strategy systems! Overall, the team has grown very comfortable working with each other and with Godot and Krita as their tools.

What's next for Revenant's Hand

We would like to develop the aesthetic of the game further and do some final refinements of gameplay with more time. The polished game will hopefully be available for free on Itch.io soon!