Guardian of the Nine
Guardian of the Nine from Kaitlyn Grace
Guardian of the Nine

Guardian of the Nine was my sr capstone project for my game design degree.
The game story is about Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld, and after a cataclysmic event (where all the doors to each level and the human world are thrown open) they are thrown into the very last ring. They meet a floating skull, Demarion, who begrudgingly offers to guide them through the layers...for a price of course. Now Cerberus must fight there way through all nine rings (progressively getting harder as they go), and save the world!
This labor of love comprises three intense months of designing levels, animations and coding. There are three playable levels, each is a ring of hell: ring nine, ring eight and ring seven (taking inspiration from Dante's Inferno). This was one of the first times I was able to create levels on my own. I relished the challenge but with such a close time frame I wish I would have had more time to polish it.
All credit for assets and sounds is giving in game under Settings.

Honestly I'm really happy with how the title screen looked in my finished version. I spent a good amount of time trying to get the feel I wanted here. It reminds me a lot of the 90s games I used to play as a kid! :)
Ring Nine: My first level! It's still not perfect but I am happy with how it turned out. I went with a traditional hellscape for this, including a prison ward and a vertical skull pit the player starts in and has to crawl out of. I wanted to add an extra layer above the lava chamber but ran out of time. This one features a side chamber and a lot of glowing crystals, in addition to two lava pits! Don't fall in!
Level Eight: This one was all about darkness. I made it purposfully hard to see (giving Damerion extra glow so the player used him as a light to find their way around or could use their fire breath as well). I added statues with eyeballs to point in the correct direction.
Level Seven, the ice level. I had a ton of fun with this one, adding cracking ice sounds to Cerbs run track and adding a icicle falling for a particle effect. Wind howling and ice cracking are two ambiance noises that can be heard as well. There is even a elevated tunnel (on the right most side) for the player to explore, which leads to the end of the level.
This was the original in game screen capture I used for my title screen. I wasn't overly happy with it so I decided to bring it into photoshop to get a bit of a glow up. This was a simple scene I threw together in Unity. It was really fun finding and placing everything just so!
And here is the photoshop glow up! Nothing too major, just gave the head in the background more definition, and the one in the foreground a bit of a glow up. I also wanted the image to more cloesly match the in game model (that I added quite a bit to) so I did that in this scene. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to spend on it, so its not BEAUTIFUL, but it was a much better image than the original in my opinion. I am planning to go back and really put some polish on it though.
I'm very happy with the health design I made! I used tribal designs to influence the two Cerberus heads, and looked up a lot of different summoning circles to get an idea of how I wanted mine to look. Each rune is totally unique. EACH. AND. EVERY. ONE. *eyetwitch*
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Guardian of the Nine

Guardian of the Nine was my sr capstone project for my game design degree.
The game story is about Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld, and after a cataclysmic event (where all the doors to each level and the human world are thrown open) they are thrown into the very last ring. They meet a floating skull, Demarion, who begrudgingly offers to guide them through the layers...for a price of course. Now Cerberus must fight there way through all nine rings (progressively getting harder as they go), and save the world!
This labor of love comprises three intense months of designing levels, animations and coding. There are three playable levels, each is a ring of hell: ring nine, ring eight and ring seven (taking inspiration from Dante's Inferno). This was one of the first times I was able to create levels on my own. I relished the challenge but with such a close time frame I wish I would have had more time to polish it.
All credit for assets and sounds is giving in game under Settings.

Available
Freelance, Full-time, Moonlighting
Kaitlyn Grace
Game Designer Saint Paul, MN