Steam Download: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592260/Metamorphos/

What is Metamorphos?

Metamorphos is a Dark Souls-like game where you play as a sand guardian who has woken up from deep slumber to cleanse the corruption that has entered the abandoned lands that were once his home.

This game was made in Unity 2019.4 starting in my junior year of university with a team size of 17-24 people which was made up of 6 programmers, 4 designers, 2 producers, and 12 artists with an estimated development time of about a year. This large team was formed to follow the vision of our awesome art director Arthur Bates and we are all glad to be a part of his vision.

What Did I Work on for Metamorphos?

My main responsibilities for this game were to lead the camera and character controller in its entirety as well as lead the forefront of gameplay mechanics and abilities of the Enemy AI.

Programmer Responsibilities:

  • 3rd Person Character Controller
  • 3rd Person Camera Controller
  • Dynamic 3rd Person Targeting System (Tutorial on this here!)
  • Cinematic Camera System (Tutorial Coming Soon!)
  • Sand Shark Abilities
  • Boss Abilities
  • Destructible Objects
  • Interactable Objects

Designer Responsibilities:

  • Working with designers to develop proper AI attacks
  • Camera Designer for proper set cinematics

What Did I Learn From Metamorphos?

This game had the major challenge of working with teammates and communication across different disciplines. We as a team knew this would be a struggle since this project was already over-scoped but we still hard committed to this vision with full force knowing we need to spend the extra hours getting things right. We had great producers that managed deadlines but still even with the best team, problems will arise and it is out job as a team to get over these hurdles.

So as I did this with Zombie Boy, I will create another list of general advice and things to watch out for.

  1. Communication is not only communicated through speaking. Actions, inactions, pictures, and even hand gestures are all forms of communications so utilize them well. Something that worked well with working with artists was always having a reference material at hand to show exactly what you want or how you want it.
  2. Life happens. In this case 2020 for everyone happened. Covid-19, social distancing, and many more things made this specific year awful. So let me say this and stress this enough. IT IS OKAY. Meeting deadlines is important, but asking for help when things don’t go your way is even better. Please reach out to your teammates if you feel like something is too much and lets offload that work from you.
  3. My team specifically was very hard working and I have no quarrels with that. However, we also were not very social. Group bonding is maybe one of the most important things to have. So, we tried to push for bonding events after major deadlines and milestones. You learn a lot from these moments and it is honestly something more important than building games.
  4. We made a Souls-like clone. Never do this. We are fortunate that we are in school to learn from our mistakes. For all of us, this was a learning experience. Our game copies the Dark Souls genre well, however it does not feel like Dark Souls, well it does but not exactly. Getting this feeling is one of the hardest things to do. So, I want to tell you here and now, make a game that brings novelty which means unique elements and have bits of Dark Souls here and there. Getting all the base features of a game is one of the hardest things to do.
  5. To the point above, any cloned game deserves all the respect it can get. I am serious. Making a clone of something is extremely hard, so if anyone tells you, “I made a clone of this.” Give them the respect they deserve.
  6. Last one, Have Fun! If you are not finding fun from what you are working, ask the producer to do a different task and then get back on the work. Having a different view point after coming back to a problem really helps.
  7. Fine one more, do not be attached to the work you do, sometimes it might never be used. Okay I am done. Just Kidding.
  8. Everyone, and I mean everyone needs to the play the game and take notes once a week about things they do and don’t like. This is the bug-catching machine right here. I will probably add more to this list, so for now I am done!