— PROJECT NAME
This Game is About Robots
— ROLES
Game Designer
Gameplay Programmer
— Timeline
August 2025 – Present
— Engine
Unreal 5.6
This Game is About Robots is a 3D metroidvania about a robot. Manufactured to transfer energy between objects – you are a walking battery with the ability to power the world around you. After a freak accident, you find yourself in the lower levels of Cog Springs, the only home you’ve ever known.
There, you uncover the truth that the society you once believed was perfect is built upon the shoulders of something much darker. Now you must utilize your energy powers to escape the lower levels, all while dodging the watchful eye of a propaganda-powered dictatorship.
I am currently working on this project with a small team as a game designer and gameplay programmer.
Coming Soon – 08/2026
Gameplay Overview
This Game is About Robots (TGiAR) is a game about energy. One of the things I challenged myself with was to build a game around that single resource, and explore how we could work within this constraint to create an engaging experience that rejects the idea that depth and elegance are always at odds with one another. We arrived to a system the we believe accomplishes this goal quite well, in which energy simultaneously serves as their armor, health, ammo, and mana.
Player Abilities and Combat Design
Making a game with one recourse introduces a bit of challenge when it comes to player agency. In the earliest iterations of TGiAR, the gameplay focus was almost entirely on the chargeable objects in the environment. While the intended goal was for the core loop to be more in line with a portal-like puzzle game, the actual experience ended up being about what you were interacting with, not how or why. To rectify this, we shifted the focus of the game to the player's suite of movement abilities, each of which have a unique way of affecting the energy levels of nearby actors.
In a system like this, the player has more options to choose from when powering or draining chargeables, and the focus of play becomes how the player is interacting with the worlds, while chargeable objects shifted from the core of the experience, to the incentive to engage with the system.
Below is a high level overview on the player's movement abilities. For a more detailed breakdown, feel free to visit our online documentation (in progress as the game continues to be developed).
Movement Abilities – High Level Overview
Enemies
As the player traverses the lower levels, they encounter 8 types of hostile drone that have been ordered to eliminate intruders at all costs. In order to defend themselves, the player must use their abilities to charge enemies, which causes them to overheat and eventually explode.
Enemies are all supposed to be rather trivial to defeat in a vacuum, but gain strength in numbers. This is simply because one of the best ways to make a player feel powerful is to give them an ability that can, to be frank, explode a bunch of stuff at the same time.
The two broad types of enemy are the actual threats an distractions that make it more difficult to reach or defeat a threat. One of the best examples of this are the enemies featured above, Linking Guys and Alphas. Alphas are pretty big threats, as they have a large energy supply, and feature a powerful cannon that fires dangerous projectiles in a burst. Linking Guys (as their name subtly suggests) link their supply to a nearby Alpha, draining it of any incoming energy, and effectively healing it. The most effective method to kill these enemies is to use a radial effect, such as electrodash. For more detailed information on enemy types, please refer to online documentation (in progress as the game continues to be developed).
Technical Design Strategy
A mentor of mine once said, "Level design is 80% of a metroidvania." As the gameplay programmer on this project, this gives me the responsibility to support the level designers as much as I can, by ensuring my designs are as flexible and intuitive as possible. This strategy empowers the LDs with ability to design and construct creative rooms quickly. Below is an example of this , using elevators as an example.
1 of 20+ Unique Chargeable Objects
Editable details of the Energy Components
To learn more about all of the chargeable objects in the game, and the editable details exposed to the level design team, check out this link -> here
System Architecture
TGiAR is built using a component based system, revolving around an asset called BPC Energy. This is the asset that contains information regarding an energy actors Energy Supply, and is responsible for delegating Energy Events, which are what allow actors to respond to being charged, drained, depleted, etc.
Any designer will be able to tell you that video games are just inputs and outputs. In our system, you can think of BPC Energy as being responsible for inputs, and Energy Events, as the outputs. For more details, visit The Energy System Docs.
