Eldritch: Empowering Players With Dynamic Mesh Building
Indie game, playable on itch.io.
In short: Surreal game offering players the use of real-time user-generated meshes for dynamic path creation. Built by Eduardo Martinelli, a Unity systems & performance engineer in Vancouver, Canada.
Eldritch is a puzzle-platformer inspired by psychedelic rock, centered on a core mechanic of real-time, user-generated mesh construction. The project focuses on the technical challenges of runtime geometry generation and performance optimization within an interactive environment.
Key technical achievements include:
- Runtime Mesh Generation: Developed a system allowing players to dynamically create 3D meshes to navigate obstacles. This required implementing real-time vertex manipulation and collision baking to ensure player-created paths are always physically valid and performant.
- Event-Driven Architecture: Utilized an event-based framework to decouple game systems, facilitating rapid prototyping of complex puzzle mechanics and ensuring a scalable codebase for iterative level design.
- Asynchronous Level Management: Implemented asynchronous scene loading and asset pre-loading to eliminate transition delays. This system manages memory efficiently to support seamless, high-fidelity environmental shifts without interrupting the gameplay flow.
- Iterative Level Design: Refined puzzle logic through multiple iterations to balance the flexibility of free-form mesh creation with structured difficulty, ensuring intuitive player interactions and consistent game state validation.
The development of Eldritch highlights the integration of custom geometry tools with robust systems architecture to create a unique, technically-driven gameplay experience.