Catalyst

Catalyst is an ongoing 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. It’s currently built using the Unity game engine, and has been an incredible learning experience for me so far. 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 incredible tunes. The game still has some placeholder Zelda sound effects, which I’ll replace with custom sounds eventually.

So without further ado…here’s a video playthrough of the current build! This demo represents a small vertical slice of a much bigger game that I’ve envisioned, and it showcases one major area/dungeon in the game. My hope is that one day I’ll be able to flesh it out a bit more and turn it into a full size game.

World Building

I’m still in the process of figuring out the game’s plot, but the primary theme mostly revolves around a lone protagonist wandering through a ruined foreign land. Here are a couple environment concepts I’ve created to help me get a better idea of the world that I’m trying to create:

Creatures and Characters

I’ve also created concepts for various different creatures and characters the player might encounter along the way. Most of these haven’t found their way into the game yet, but I’d love for the final product to have a very 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 really enjoyed using graph paper to design some of the level layouts for Catalyst.

Sprites and Animations

I’m a huge fan of pixelart, and I’ve 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: