Inspiration
What it does
How we built it
Challenges we ran into
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
What's next for THE HIDDEN ROOT
Inspiration
THE HIDDEN ROOT was inspired by dark folklore, living forests, retro pixel-art adventures, and stories about memory, identity, and corruption. I wanted the forest to feel like a character rather than only a background.
What it does
THE HIDDEN ROOT is a browser-based 2D action RPG set in a rain-soaked corrupted forest. The player explores the environment, recovers lost memories, interacts with story characters, switches between living root weapons, fights animated enemies, and confronts the Root Warden.
The game includes:
- Browser-based WebGL gameplay
- Player-name introduction
- Automatic cinematic fade into gameplay
- Directional movement and procedural character gestures
- Multiple root weapons
- Memory collection and dialogue
- Animated enemy encounters
- Boss battle and endgame sequence
- Retro rain, lighting, particles, audio, and responsive HUD
How I built it
I built the game using Unity 6 and C#. The project uses Unity's Universal Render Pipeline with the 2D Renderer, Input System, TextMeshPro, Rigidbody2D physics, custom gameplay state machines, procedural animation, particle effects, and WebGL deployment.
Character reactions are applied only to dedicated visual child objects. This keeps colliders, physics, movement controllers, and attack origins correctly aligned during attack, hurt, pickup, victory, and defeat animations.
Challenges I ran into
The largest challenges were coordinating animation with combat timing, preventing one-shot gestures from becoming stuck, keeping pixel-art movement stable, maintaining readable boss telegraphs during heavy rain, and preparing the complete Unity game for browser delivery.
WebGL packaging also required compression settings that work on normal web hosts while keeping the full game playable without installing anything.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
- Created a complete playable action-RPG progression
- Built a cinematic introduction without a traditional menu
- Synchronized visible attacks with their damage moments
- Added readable player and boss reactions without skeletal rigs
- Preserved collider alignment throughout procedural animation
- Produced validated Windows and WebGL builds
- Successfully loaded the complete game in a browser with no WebGL console errors
What I learned
I learned how important visual feedback is for combat readability. Small anticipation, recoil, tint, scale, and timing changes can make simple sprite-based actions feel much more responsive.
I also learned how to structure Unity gameplay so presentation can animate independently from physics and how to optimize the build-and-validation workflow for WebGL.
What's next for THE HIDDEN ROOT
Next I would like to expand the forest with additional encounters, improve browser loading size, add more environmental storytelling, introduce accessibility options, and continue balancing the Root Warden battle using player feedback.
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