Slash
An open-world action RPG featuring a variety of enemies guarding distinct locations, multiple weapons with special effects, magic potions to aid you in combat, and valuable loot to discover. Below is a gameplay preview and an overview of its key features and systems.
Gameplay preview
Feature overview
Playable character
The player controls a third-person character with an adjustable camera distance. The movement system supports running, jumping, dodging, and weapon handling through equip and holster animations.
Foot placement is done using Inverse Kinematics (IK), which ensures that the feet adapt naturally to slopes and uneven terrain.
Enemy types
There are four enemy types: Archers, Paladins, Insects, and Raptors.
They differ in attributes such as health, damage, movement speed, patrol behavior, attack timing, and detection ranges. Each type also varies in how quickly it spots the player, how aggressively it pursues, and how many souls it drops on defeat.
Enemies can also alert each other to the player's presence, making encounters more dynamic and engaging.
Weapon types
The game features four different weapons, three of which have unique and powerful effects:
Basic sword - A starting weapon with reduced damage and range.
Vampiric sword - Heals the player on a successful hit.
Poisonous sword - Deals significant damage over time.
Chilling sword - Slows down enemy movement and actions.
Magic potions
There are two types of magic potions, each offering a different effect:
Healing potion - Instantly restores a small portion of health, with the remaining amount regenerating over time.
Stamina potion - Immediately restores a large portion of stamina and boosts its recovery over time. It also increases movement speed and speeds up all actions.
Destructibles with loot
Various breakable objects are placed throughout the world, each tied to a specific loot table. They may contain nothing, different types of treasure with varying value, magic potions, or, less commonly, better swords.
When near them, the character automatically uses a lower attack to make sure they can be reliably destroyed.
Destructible foliage
A total of 10,594 cacti are scattered across the world, all fully destructible. To maintain performance and retain the benefits of using Unreal Engine's foliage system, static meshes are seamlessly replaced with destructible variants as the player gets close.
This approach ensures smooth gameplay without sacrificing interactivity.
Combat system
Enemies attempt to encircle the player, adjusting their positioning to apply pressure from multiple angles. Motion warping is used during attacks to ensure more accurate strikes on the target.
Directional hit reactions cause characters to stagger back based on the impact's direction, adding depth to combat interactions.
Dynamic navigation meshes enable enemies to adapt to changing terrain, allowing for uninterrupted pursuit around destructible obstacles.
Dynamic enemy spawning
To optimize performance, enemies in the world are initially hidden. As the player approaches, spawners at each location progressively bring them into view: first as skeletal meshes, then as partially active entities, and ultimately fully activated with behaviors such as player detection.
This solution delivered the biggest performance improvement across the project and allowed 217 enemies to roam the world simultaneously.
For demonstration purposes, the spawn distance was reduced by 10x.