Solo project, GDScript programing, concept art, 2 animation
This project is a solo-developed game created as the final project for my Bachelor's degree. It’s a short demo designed to showcase my skills in art and animation, programming, and original game concept development.
Monsters and Pans is a 2D action-adventure game with a top-down, isometric perspective, set in a whimsical, food-themed world. The story follows Marco, a young aspiring chef on a journey to become the best cook in the world — battling enemies and learning new recipes along the way.
The game was built using Godot 4.0 — a tool I taught myself from scratch, along with GDScript — chosen for its open-source community, lightweight workflow, and strong 2D engine, which made it ideal for experimenting with custom mechanics and an isometric perspective.
Visual Development & Style Exploration
After I landed on the main character design, I spent some time figuring out what visual style would work best for the game. I tried out a bunch of different styles — from a painted 2D look to a few pixel art versions with different pixel ratios. The main goal was trying to balance, the time I’d need to make the assets and animations, while still keeping without losing visual quality. I tested out other character design's— with different tools, and assets. I also made sure to see how they looked against different environments, so the characters would stand out and not get lost in the background.
Game Design Mechanics & Coding
While developing the game, I spent most of my time building and refining different gameplay systems and mechanics. I started with getting the player movement right, since the game is isometric, I had to make sure the character walks at angles instead of just straight along the X and Y axis. After that, I focused on the combat mechanics. I created two main types of attacks: a close-range melee attack and a ranged attack. I also designed and coded multiple enemy types to keep things interesting. There’s a simple tomato enemy, a turnip that can blow itself up to damage the player, and a final boss, a giant corn cob that has two phases. In the second phase, the corn cob multiplies into several mini corn ball clones. Besides all the other assets that i had to creat from traps, recepi book, life system, and npc interaction/chatbox.
