Remanence

Remanence is a game I have spent the last year an a half on. I worked with a multidisciplinary team of 21 artists, designers, and programmers to craft a compelling half an hour experience.

The game is a first-person souls-like that rewards players for mastering the sword combat mechanics. Players play a survivor of the apocalypse that is trying to rise against the robotic cult that has destroyed the world using nanomachines. Armed with only a sword, players must master combat and seek revenge on the cybernetic overlord. 

Most of the props were modeled in Zbrush, Maya, and Blender. A few rock assets and decals were taken from Quixel Megascans. Bespoke textures for props were done in substance painter while many environment textures were made procedurally using Unreal 5's blueprints. The city was generated using PCG in tandem with the Houdini plugin for unreal. Several procedural tools were made to aid in environment creation. These include: A building generator, A tool that grows vines on input meshes, A tool to add edge wear to things, and a network that creates looping flag animations with various strengths of wind. 

Backstory:

A prolonged global conflict has led to a massive cultural and industrial shift towards militarism. Non-crucial infrastructure was left to rot and new construction was increasingly monolithic and imposing to inspire submission to the state. The war lasted 50 years and accelerated existing crisis which were often used to justify said war. This lead to increasing drought, famine, intense weather, and an ideological shift in the population. The predominant nationalist rhetoric and centralization of state power were seen as necessary to preserve developed society, and were used to manipulate public perception of the conflict. During the sunset period of the war a  self-replicating, self-improving nanomachine swarm developed as a superweapon  was used and ultimately backfired, consuming and destroying everything in its path. Unfortunately, its creative intelligence was limited so as it attempted to evolve it was limited to mimicking the flora and fauna that was already there. 

Several hundred years in the future humans fear the swarm to such a degree that in some instances they have come to revere it. So much so in fact that they have formed a cult with the swarm as the the predominant deity. Human sacrifices to the swarm are ritualized, serving as a way to satiate the swarm and preventing it from migrating in search of fresh biomass.

You play as the swarms attempt to create a new form for itself, to do this it integrated symbiotically with a human host. This is one of the few instances where a person was able to retain their human will and can exert control over the swarm that has taken over their body. This being the case you have taken it upon yourself to end the nanomachines once and for all. In finding the source of the swarm and have become locked in a seemingly endless loop of life and death, hopelessly fighting to finally end the swarms reign over humanity and the world around it. 

Team Credits:

Programming

Anthon Reid - Tech Director, AI Programmer

Ryamn Barnett - Gameplay, Graphics Programmer

David Porter - Producer, Quality Director

Riley Durbin - Systems, Gameplay Programmer

Cameron Myers -  Quality Director, Automation Engineer

Art

Simi Randhawa - Art Director, Animator

Kira Shinoda - Art Producer, Animator

Liz Ponkow - Producer, Concept Artist

Levi Yang - Modeler, Concept, Environment, UI Artist

Zeke Lacy - Modeler, Rigger, Animator

Benjamin Poot - VFX Artist

Roberto Velasquez - VFX Artist

Nolan Lovelace - Environment Artist, Modeler

Vasiliki Makris - Lighting Artist

Ben Tuttle - Character Artist

Design

Skylar Isaacs - Creative Director, Narrative Designer, & Systems Designer

Dylan Simpson - Systems Designer

Blake Tran - User Research Designer

Vasilisa Shcherbakova - UI/UX Designer, Level Designer

Isaac Mitchell - Level Designer

Eric Park - Combat Designer

Audio

Caleb Shefield - Audio Lead

Austin Clark - Audio Programmer, Co-Producer

Santi Soza - Sound Designer

Tyler Radocaj - Sound Designer