Codex: G
Overview
Codex: G or God’s Codex is an urban fantasy action-adventure RPG developed for PC, wherein a family of street kids come together to embark on a holy quest only to discover a dark truth about their divine bloodline.
The story is told episodically, with each episode bringing the player closer to finding and piecing together the lost pages of God’s Codex, the complete original bible. In doing so you encounter demons, biblically accurate angels, lost artifacts, and other tools you’ll need to stop the demonic legion and trap the devil back in hell.
This was a group project with myself and 2 incredibly talented concept artists, Jya Yan and Chloe Huang.
ROLE
Project Lead
TEAM
3 people
TOOLS
Unity, Maya,
Github
GENRE
Third Person
Fanstasy RPG
LENGTH
14 weeks
Game Design & Prototype
Codex: G is an urban fantasy action-adventure RPG featuring dual-class characters, party-based combat, and boss fights.
The main goal of this project was to design gameplay that would support a small group of characters and enable them to work together. Creating a third-person real-time party-based combat system came with a lot of design and prototyping challenges. On the development side, I needed to create a flexible, modular architecture that would allow players to track, display, and transfer abilities from character to character. On the design side, I needed to balance the strategic gameplay of deciding which character to switch to and what abilities to use, with real-time gameplay. On top of that, I needed to design an enemy encounter to support it.
Party System
For much of the game, players can have up to three companions in their party. These companions assist in combat, participate in conversations with other NPCs, and can occasionally unlock additional quests. The players starting companions are their siblings, Valen, Morgana, and Raoul. Like the player, they were street kids before being adopted by the Demon Hunter, Marcus Underwood.
Each companion has a default base class that specializes to be complimentary to the player. For example, if the player picks a magic class, like Morgana, Morgana will specialize opposite the player, either in DPS or support.
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Combat Design
In the combat loop, players first encounter an enemy and discover their weakness (weak to ranged attacks, holy magic, etc). Then, players identify the party member best equipped to deal with that weakness. If an enemy is a shadow type, a character that uses holy magic would be the best. Then, if necessary, switch to that player.
If an enemy is a boss, they will have multiple stages, with each stage following its own AI logic. For example, in the first stage, a plant enemy's weakness might be fire magic, but in stage 2, it might use a shield of bark that can be most easily broken with melee attacks.
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Enemy Design
In addition to demons and golems, the player has a much more organized and dedicated enemy. The Vulgata, a brutal, secret organization of the Vatican is responsible for securing papal secrets for the Vatican Archives or destroying them. The history of the Vulgata is long and dark, spanning across eras of inquisition, crusades, and the burning of witches. They are even rumored to be responsible for the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Vulgata Assassins are quick and stealthy, forcing players to think on their feet at close range. Using their stealth strike, Assassins turn to smoke and materialize behind the player before landing a crucial strike.
Moveset
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Walk 2.5 m/s
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Dash 5 m/s
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Dodge
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Kick
Abilities
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One-handed knife swipe
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Two-handed knife swipe
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Lunge strike
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Stealth strike
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Vulgata Executioners are slow brutes, landing decisive and devastating hits. When they aren’t using their censure spear and releasing incense to slow the player's senses, Executioners swing their bible to knock back the player.
Moveset
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Walk 1.5 m/s
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Run 3 m/s
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Block
Abilities
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Circular spear swing
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Diagonal spear slash
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Forward spear strike
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Forward tomes swing
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Vulgata Summoners seem like less of a threat than their counterparts, but have a very powerful trick up their sleeves. While assassins and executioners use their weapons to attack the player, the Summoner uses dark magic to conjure a Seraphim of their own making. These biblically accurate angels become a serious threat to players, who can choose to take out the summoner first, weakening the Seraphim, or destroying the Seraphim first, leaving the Summoner defenseless.
Moveset
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Walk 2 m/s
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Dodge
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Crouch
Abilities
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Shadow Bolts (ranged magic attacks)
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Prayer Push (AOE pushback)
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Summon Seraphim
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Weapon Design
In the early stages of ideation for this project, I wanted to design weapons that incorporated Catholic imagery and helped sell the IP. In each case, I paired a traditional fantasy weapon with an integral Catholic symbol and rendered them in Maya to help refine the concept.
Cross Crossbow
Compartment for crossbow bolts
Monstrance Staff Axe
Rosary Dagger
Reputation System & Factions
The reputation system tracks actions and speech to determine the player's relation to different factions. Players can earn and lose reputation by completing faction quests and making choices favorable or disfavorable to that faction. Reputation may grant the player access to unique abilities, rewards, additional quests, or additional dialogue options.
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D20 Dungeon
Codex: G originally started as a 5 room tabletop dungeon. This is where I developed the IP's central characters, background lore, and overarching goals. This was especially helpful in "playtesting" the story elements I wanted to use in my digital prototype, and gauging where players wanted the story to go and what gameplay decisions they wanted to make.
Writing Samples
While developing the digital prototype for this project, I wanted to lay a greater foundation for the game's narrative. Although the story is designed for episodic segments, I wanted to try to scope the grand scheme of the story into a 3 Act Structure. I practiced writing scenes for different genres, to better explore how genre can play to the strengths of a scene. I also spent a lot of time writing scenes with the intention of developing conflict. The main goal of these scenes was to build pressure and anticipation to something that would lead to combat gameplay following the scene. This helped push me to develop narrative conflict instead of relying on in-scene combat. It also helps build up anticipation for the combat encounter later on and gives the player more of a sense of agency for re-engaging the conflict post-scene.