By the Blade is the student final project I worked on at Vancouver Film School. On This project, I worked as the Game Designer, Gameplay Programmer as well as VFX & Shader Artist. How to make the players feel good when engaging in the combat was my main focal point on this project.
Parry is the core mechanic of By the Blade and it was the first thing I worked on during production. I incorporated VFX, Stopping Frames, and Screen Shakes to create a satisfying feedback when the player performs a successful parry. The frame data on the parry was the biggest problem I encountered when tuning the feedback. Through constantly iterating and listening to feedback, I learned that often then not, align the parry window realistically with the animation might not yield the best result.
Although the game is mainly focusing on the parry mechanic, attack is a mechanic that player would also constantly interact with. Because of that, it is also qutie important to create a satisfying feedback: enemies on the receiving end need to react to the attack, giving the player the feeling that their attack registers. In the case of here, I implemented an on hit flash and slight knockback whenever an enemy's being hit along with a subtle screenshake just to increase the impactfulness of the attack.
One last thing on the player's toolkit is the muso mode. This is the execution type of attack in By the Blade. It's a power move player has that enables them the ability to one shot most of the enemies in game. For this specific attack, I want the player to truly feel a sense of empowerment. From the black-and-white world with only the characters highlighted, to the subtle slow-motion effects, the gradual widening of the camera view, and the dramatic screen split—every element should feel distinct, pulling the player out of the ordinary playspace and into a moment that feels extraordinary.
In my opinion, the feedback of getting hit is as important as when the player hits the enemy. It's always frustrating when players don't realize they're taking damage and being killed, especially when they believe they're actually winning. Aside from having a proper feedback, I think it's also important to distinguish this effect slightly from when enemies are taking hit to eliminate players from confusion. In By the Blade, both the player and enemy characters share the same hit flash effect. However, for the player, I added a full-screen on-hit effect using chromatic aberration to clearly distinguish when they're the one taking damage.
In By the Blade, I tried to create a fluent gameplay experience as much as possible: For example, when the player's dead, they automatically revive themselves with a smooth transition. I hope this approach ensures the player isn't distracted by non-diegetic UI elements, such as restart prompts, and remains fully immersed in the magic circle for the entirety of their gameplay session.
The parry VFX in By the Blade consists of three elements: a long, stretched slash effect, sparks bursting from the sword, and a fullscreen distortion shader that pushes pixels outward.
The portal itself is a cube with a distortion material applied on top. To make it more welcoming, I added an additional vfx of blue energy paper flying into the portal and creating ripple effect when the particle dies.
The teleportation and healing vfx use the same ribbon vfx as the base.
For teleportation, I had an extra flipbook particle surround the ribbon showing kanji characters fading away. The healing effect, on the other hand, featured generic green dots as side particles alongside the main ribbon effect. In addition, I added an effect on the player side that emits vertical, needle-like particles, accompanied by crosses and kanji characters, to create an aura-like visual.Enemy dying vfx can be split into two parts: Enemy dissolving using shadergraph and particles sampling the character models with a turbulence effect added on top.
The coin vfx is a combination of a single coin mesh and a trail attach to it. An explosion of coin mesh is created when the vfx object hits the target.
Agian, the portal open vfx is done using a combination of simple particles: Torii lighting up, the explosion of the shattered pieces, the background of the portal and the portal icon appearing.