Skybound Heresy — Charles Roger-Boutbien

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Description

Play as a fanatical, grotesque inquisitor hunting a witch across floating islands in 17th-century Scotland. Explore aboard a rickety vessel, face her frenzied guardians in frantic duels, and carve your way to her lair, all in the name of your unshakeable, delirious faith.

The inquisitor drags a hammer too heavy to carry. He swings it to propel himself like Thor, using momentum to cross gaps and close distance. Combat is built around a flame meter that charges with each hit and powers a devastating AOE heavy attack. Five weeks from blank page to playable game.

My Contributions

Level Design, Navigation

Designed the traversal zones between islands, layout, jump distances and momentum windows calibrated to the hammer's movement system.

Level Design, Island 2

Designed and built the game's largest island in full: layout, encounter placement, exploration flow and visual landmarks.

Combat Design

Contributed to the combat system design under tight schedule pressure, attack properties, flame meter tuning and the three golem archetypes (Popcorn, Normal, Boss).

Key Design Decisions

Five weeks for a full game forced brutal scoping, the hammer movement and the flame meter are the entire design. Every level and encounter decision had to serve those two systems, nothing else.
Island 2 being the largest meant it needed the clearest structure, a readable silhouette, one dominant landmark and a loop layout so players always had a sense of direction without a map.
The three golem archetypes were designed as a teaching sequence: Popcorn teaches the attack, Normal introduces the weak point and splitting, Boss demands the player actually masters both before they can win.

Skills

Level DesignCombat DesignEncounter DesignUnreal Engine 5

Context

SchoolTeamActionPCUnreal Engine 55 weeks

Links

Itch.io Trailer YouTube