Game Project 2

Entropy

During this game project, I worked as Lead Programmer, guiding the team towards a finished product. My personal contributions include everything surrounding the players gun and all logic for its projectiles, as well as some minor puzzle pieces and the exits of all levels.

The game was created in Unreal Engine 5 using its Blueprint system. With a heavy focus on adaptability, PlayStation 5 support, creative puzzles and breathtaking visuals.

In 2025, this game was awarded the Swedish Game Awards New Talent Game of the Year and Best Visuals awards, as well as being nominated for their New Talent Best Technology and Gamers Choice awards.

As the main and only tool the player has to traverse the games levels, I made sure to get these mechanics to feel as good as possible. The gun has four main parts to it. Aiming, firing a single orb, recalling a single orb and recalling all fired orbs.

In order to avoid having the gun clip through the world, the player dynamically moves the gun away to avoid intersections. This was done rather than rendering the gun on its own due to some technical limitations, but this does provide the player a sense of existence inside the games world.

As the orbs travel, they sweep a spherical shape across their travel path, and if a collision is found and this collision is not with a puzzle piece, the travel direction is reflected to create a bounce, and the rest of the orbs travel path is swept along this new direction, continuing until no more collisions occur.

When an orb hits an interactable puzzle piece, it generates a path from the point of collision towards a connection point on the puzzle piece, then quickly travels along this path to connect.

Recalling an orb when multiple have been fired requires a set of rules to decide which orb is to be retrieved first. The priority of retrieval goes as follows from first to last:
Airborne orb -> Orb connected to a puzzle piece -> Orb connected to a Switch (explained further below)

If two or more orbs with the same priority can be recalled, the oldest one will be prioritised.

Since the game lacks a traditional user interface, aiming is instead done through the players gun firing a laser beam which displays the exact path that a fired projectile will follow.

This was achieved by reusing the same form of travel and collision logic that the projectiles themselves use. Sweeping a sphere shape a set distance from the gun towards the point where the player is looking, bouncing if a hit is found and generating a particle system with particles between each hit.

When aiming, instead of regenerating new particles every frame, this system updates the particles that already exist. Only generating new ones if more bounces compared to the last frame were detected, or destroying already existing ones if fewer are detected.

I worked on two puzzle pieces to the game, internally called a Switch, and a Possessable Cube.

The Switch connects to other puzzle pieces to disable them and make them not be interactable with until the switch itself has been activated.
Two versions of this switch exist, one of which consumes the orb fired into it, permanently removing it from the players inventory and allowing for longer more in-depth puzzles, and the other letting the player retrieve the orb from it like a regular puzzle piece.

The Switch connects to other puzzle pieces to disable them and make them not be interactable with until the switch itself has been activated.
Two versions of this switch exist, one of which consumes the orb fired into it, permanently removing it from the player and allowing for longer more in-depth puzzles, and the other letting the player retrieve the orb from it like a regular puzzle piece.

The other puzzle piece is a cube which mimics the players movement when interacted with. Together with a form of Switch acting as a "parking spot" where the cube can be dropped off at allowed for some really creative puzzles.