(2025)
Ashenford a town recently, gave the rights to Black Marrow Inc to mine for oil in an old mine, during which something unforeseen happened. Mean while you've been arrested for reckless driving, later you wake up in a cell to find the town has fallen into chaos over the past two weeks. With the main power out, the police station is running on a backup generator. The cell doors are open, and a stranger calls out to you over the radio. Hearing their plea for help, it's up to you to escape the town and find this unfamiliar ally.
Ashenford is my capstone project — an action survival game delivering an immersive first-person experience. The development spanned two three-month cycles, progressing from prototype to final product. Through many iterations of different concepts, we arrived at Ashenford — a story-driven game set in a small town on the brink of collapse. It explores the aftermath of a calamity caused by the greed of a mining company, and examines the socio-cultural impacts of a community’s reliance on fossil fuels.
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Overall Grade: High Distinction
Project Info
Game Link:
Team Size:
4
Project Duration:
6 Months
Role:
Project Lead & Technical design
Engine & Tools:
Unreal Engine 5.4, Dvinici Resolve, Krita, Blender, FLStudio
Responsibilities
Over the course of this project I had a lot of responsibilities and looked after multiple aspects of the game, as well as other team lead tasks:
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Team & Task management
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Scope and risk management
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General Game Design and Planning
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Cinematic Design and Implementation
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Animation Design and implementation
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System Design and Implementation
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Ui Programming
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Gameplay Programming
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Combat Design and game juice
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Beyond this I helped the team wherever I could in other aspects, Like our programmer with the save and load, as well as refining our interaction mechanics, Ui Animations and more.
My Work
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The first six months consisted of trying out different ideas, testing, and seeing what we could get to work in terms of systems for our prototype. I worked on developing the character controller, originally using the new motion mapping for movement, along with motion warping for mantling and the ladder system, among others. I set up the base multiplayer systems with replicated movement mechanics, then moved on to the combat system and a procedural aiming system. I helped out wherever I could as well, assisting with the player stat tracking, UI, and notes system. I also began storyboarding our in-game cinematics.
The focus was essentially to get a blockout of each system — the level, the VFX, everything — so we could spend the remaining three months refining and polishing those systems. Of course, we ran into bugs. I struggled with getting the procedural aiming system to work in true first-person when using different animations for unarmed and armed states. Along with developing the core idea, we, as a team, knew we had probably bitten off more than we could chew this trimester, especially since we were also focused on our other classes.
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Hence Coming into the next 3 months I took it too the team and had a big meeting, we revisited everything and tied everything we had down into a smaller and more manageable scope. Cutting unnecessary mechanics to keep things realistic and achievable while still hitting our narrative and gameplay goals. I handled a lot of the core systems work — things like reworking the player controller, overhauling the weapon and combat systems, rebuilding the UI, and refining how everything felt moment to moment.
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As the project went on, I focused on getting the combat to feel responsive and immersive — implementing procedural first-person aiming with added weapons sway and recoil from the ground up, weapon switching, grenade and healing systems, and polishing things like interaction systems, enemies, hit reactions, and sound feedback. Later, I moved into cinematic work, recording and integrating cutscenes to tie the story together. As the lead — I was helping guide meetings, troubleshooting technical issues, and keeping the team on track, using our task management tools and keeping a clean, consistent level of communication across the team.
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By the end, we had a solid, playable build that captured what we set out to make — something atmospheric, story-driven, and grounded.
Working alongside Jess Miller, our Level Designer, our Technical and VFX Artist; James Cassin and Matt Moller, our programmer, we collaborated to deliver Ashenford. Working with my team, we came up with a solid plan for a game that would become our Capstone project. Admittedly, the concept changed multiple times throughout the course of development. We began with a multiplayer game that combined the resource and inventory management of the Resident Evil series with a unique co-op system. We broke development into two core stages: Prototyping and Polish. The first three months of prototyping involved testing systems, experimenting with level ideas, and figuring out how to get a true first-person camera working, along with multiplayer networking and other core systems. The idea itself also had to evolve as we worked to meet a specific marking criterion for the Capstone projects — addressing a socio-cultural question.
Project Takeaways
Working on Ashenford taught me a lot about scope, communication, and persistence. Early on, I realised how important it was to plan realistically and adapt when things didn’t go as expected. Building complex systems like procedural aiming, replicated movement, and combat from scratch pushed my understanding of Unreal Engine further than any project before.
It also taught me to stay flexible — to troubleshoot, cut features when needed, and focus on polish over quantity. Keeping clear communication through our task boards and meetings was key to keeping the team on track. Overall, this project showed me how much I’ve grown not just as a developer, but as someone who can lead, problem-solve, and deliver under pressure.