The Forbidden Mine - Pirate Software 2024 Game Jam Submission

Here's my submission for the 2024 Pirate Software Game Jam which took place from January 12 - 26; a 2.5D side-scrolling platformer where you're being chased by mysterious gas and must escape the forbidden mine! Link: https://rislyei.itch.io/the-forbidden-mine
UI Art and character sprite/animations were done by Inori (discord: @pynori)
Everything else except music and SFX was done by myself.

This is my first time not only participating in this jam but also utilizing Unreal Engine 5 to make the game. My goal was to replicate the "HD-2D" style coined by Square Enix in their games such as "Octopath Traveler" by analyzing references and coming up with potential techniques to replicate the style. Another goal was to delve more into UE5 and learn all I can about blueprints, materials, sprites and VFX.

All environmental assets were modeled in Maya, sculpted in ZBrush, and textured in Substance Painter. The key to achieving this particular style is not just making it look like pixel art, but having the baked normal maps further enhance this pixel effect, which can be seen in the stone block material. Adding further control in the master material allowed me to fine tune how the textures behaved for extra polish.

There's a great article on creating a pixel art generator for substance painter found here: https://80.lv/articles/creating-a-pixel-art-generator-for-substance-3d-painter/ which I used to achieve the pixel art look on my textures in Substance Painter.

Overall I'm happy with what I've been able to achieve in two weeks and Unreal Engine 5 is incredible for being able to produce results like this in such a short time. I'm really excited to continue learning how to use it more in the future!