Tales of Vulcan

Arena Ground Level
Vulcan/Boss Statue
Arena Overview
Plunge attack dust
Boss Lock on
Win
Player and Brazier

Inspiration

We love soulslike boss fights and wanted to see if a team new to Unreal could capture that feeling in one hackathon.

What it does

A one-boss soulslike set in a ruined Roman colosseum in the desert. A bronze statue in the centre is struck by lightning and wakes up as Vulcan, the Silver Tide, a spiked silver otter, under a blood-red storm. You fight him with a spear: light and heavy attacks, a plunging attack from the air, a stamina-based dodge roll with invincibility frames, and Elden Ring-style lock-on. Vulcan uses a tail lash, obsidian spit, a flamethrower breath and a magma dive that bursts out of the ground under you. At half health he enters an Eruption phase and gets faster and stronger. The fight has a souls-style boss health bar, music, full sound effects, and its own death and victory screens.

How we built it

Unreal Engine 5 with C++ for gameplay (health, stamina, dodge, attacks, plunge, lock-on, boss AI, HUD) wired up in Blueprints, Mixamo animations retargeted onto our characters, and GitHub with Git LFS. Fire, dust, blowing sand and swaying grass are simulated in C++ without particle assets. We used Claude to help write and debug the C++ and to run automated test fights that saved screenshots and recorded the game audio.

Assets: "Spear" by DafVader and "Night Hunter Assassin" by Pigcraft (Sketchfab, CC BY); "Battle Theme A" by cynicmusic, plus sound effects from Kenney and OpenGameArt (CC0); textures from Poly Haven (CC0); animations from Mixamo.

Challenges we ran into

Using Git with Unreal's binary files. One merge corrupted our whole colosseum file. Converting to C++ mid-project. Mixamo animations that move the hips instead of the character, so the player slid away from their own body. Shrinking a 1.9-million-triangle model to work in-game. Getting the spear to sit in both hands. A packaged build that crashed on launch because the editor's compiled code was out of date with what we had pulled.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A complete, playable fight from the statue awakening to the victory screen. It has a two-phase boss, lock-on, sound and music, and was built in 24 hours mostly by first-time Unreal developers.

What we learned

Unreal's C++ and Blueprint workflow, animation retargeting and root motion, how packaging works (and how it breaks), and how to collaborate on a game project without overwriting each other's work.

What's next for Tales of Vulcan

A second boss (the Deadline Tempest), tuning the difficulty from playtests, controller support, and a main menu with settings.