Catalyst

Catalyst was a passion project that I started in 2012. I’m a huge fan of oldschool action/adventure games, and this is basically my attempt at making one. I built it using the Unity game engine. Most of the work on display is my own, including art, design, writing, and programming. Shout outs to my friend Michael Groves for his help with some of the programming and my friend Grant Henry (aka Stemage) for the great music. The game still has some placeholder Zelda sound effects, which I’ll replace with custom sounds eventually.

The prototype demo represents a small vertical slice of a much bigger game that I envisioned, and it showcases one major area/dungeon in the game.

World Building

I never really figured out the game’s plot, but it was going to revolve around a lone protagonist wandering through a ruined foreign land. Here are a couple environment concepts I created to help me get a better idea of the world:

Creatures and Characters

I also created concepts for various different creatures and characters the player might encounter along the way. Most of these never found their way into the game, but I wanted the final product to have a memorable cast of enemies and npc’s.

Design Sketches

I’ve found that sketching on paper usually helps me work through my design ideas a little better before I commit them to a digital medium. I have a bunch of paper sketches that I did for level designs, UI, game mechanics, and more. I’ve especially loved drawing maps ever since I was a kid, and I’ve always enjoyed using graph paper to design level layouts.

Sprites and Animations

I’m a huge fan of pixelart, and I spent a lot of time making sprites and animations for various characters and objects in the game. Here’s a small sample of some of the sprites I’ve made so far: