The game world that I have created is the graveyard of Burrowsville, which is tended to and inhabited by Meeko. The world of Burrowsville is a spooky and autumnal place, populated by animals, monsters, and spirits. In their town, every day is like Halloween. Meeko is the solitary Grave Reaper of Burrowsville, responsible for maintaining the tombstones within the graveyard. He’s shy and keeps to himself, only making friends with the graveyard’s skeleton inhabitants.
The game area includes Meeko’s home, some farm fields, the woods, a secret alcove, and the graveyard itself. I modeled and textured all assets, excluding the water and skybox. The playable character is a custom rigged and animated model of Meeko, and there are skeleton NPCs that were rigged and animated with Mixamo.
Here are a few images of the final result:
I had a lot of fun bringing this concept to life, as it’s been an idea I’ve had for over a year now. I was surprised at how motivated I was to continue working on this project throughout the term. The only time I experienced burnout was around the last few classes after break, which ultimately led to me not adding in all the NPCs I had hoped for. However, I’m still proud of what I was able to accomplish.
I had the most fun modeling my characters as well as painting/applying my own textures. I’ve never painted stylized textures before, and I’m really happy with the results! In the future, I’ll have to make normal/height maps for them to achieve an even better effect. Using the same types of textures also helped me get a more cohesive feel for the whole level. The parts I struggled most on were definitely UVs and animation. I’ve never liked unwrapping, and I was okay with how my UVs came out for the project even if they could have been better. As for animation, I had some geometry clipping due to the clothes laying on top of Meeko’s body mesh, so extreme poses were a bit off. I’m still happy to have tried my own animation and rigging, even if it isn’t perfect.
Overall, everything came together to make my concept come to life! I wasn’t expecting it to be exactly what I imagined, but I’m impressed at how close I was able to get in such a short time. I learned a lot of new methods and techniques that I’ll keep using in the future, especially all of the features in Unity!
MacOS Build:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1do-UmC4nzjxq032066njrRthhp2yFPET/view?usp=sharing
Windows Build:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Re1wJ5sI8HWyiJiny4Y9qVul074vrWdW/view?usp=share_link
Credits:
Sound Effects
Bones
https://freesound.org/people/NoahBangs/sounds/636089/
Forest Ambience
https://freesound.org/people/Thy-SFX/sounds/613262/
Cauldron Bubble
https://freesound.org/people/Audionautics/sounds/133901/
Music by Emre Danabasoglu
Unity Assets
Third Person Character Controller
Skybox
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/textures-materials/sky/farland-skies-cloudy-crown-60004
Water
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/lowpoly-water-107563
ahhhhhhhhhhh oh my god this is adorable! I love Meeko so much! This reminds me a lot of a level from A Hat In Time. It’s so atmospheric, relaxing in a spooky way, so adorable. The color palette is really well chosen and it feels like everything was thought out very deliberately.