Starting Forum post on the development of my game Phantom Reactor for the Unreal Fellowship 2025
WEEK 01
Like any game that has to be done in a short timeframe this game started with a brainstorm of unclear ideas and over scoping.
After a few ideas I landed on creating a platformer where you fend ghosts off with a flashlight and turn the rooms lights on to clear the level.
For context I am a 3D artist with little to no experience coding, and I struggled A LOT with the blueprinting in the beginning before I got the hang of it.
Here was my elevator Pitch -
This is what I had on the first week -
I thought I was in a great spot for the first week… if I had stuck with the initial concept but it didn’t feel fun…
You could make ghosts visible by pointing your light at them to also slow them while you platformed, but platforming while also pointing a flashlight on an arcade machine with only one joystick wasn’t really working so I scrapped it. Turns out smooth rotation with an arcade joystick is hard.
Eventually I landed on more of a Galaga style game where ghosts come at you from all angles, and you shoot up at them, but the format still didn’t feel right.
This marked the end of WEEK 01
WEEK 02
Still filled with unsurety I spent the next week exploring different possibilities for the game, one where enemies came above, one where they came from the side, and one where they came from the front.
I ended up really enjoying the Forward facing version.
Finally on Sunday of the second week I had a game that I was having fun playing, which to me was more important than anything else. If I don’t have fun playing it, then why make it at all.
I was not worried about implementing any art, animations, materials, or lighting as I’ve done all that plenty before, but blueprinting was a whole new beast and I was already halfway through…
WEEK 03
This was the first week I had to start trying to package my project and have others playtest it so I had to fix many bugs and issues while making sure the whole game loop was there - TIME WAS RUNNING OUT!
Here is where I was in the middle of the the 3rd week -
As I sent out the first build to friends and other fellows I felt like I finally had a playable game, and now it was just time for the hard part which was blueprinting features in.
This week was BY FAR the most difficult for me as I started implementing a wave spawning system, AI movement while balancing the game by planning the variations of enemies HP, Damage, and Speed. I also was implementing a teleportation dodge feature as well as different ammo powerup AOE and damage variants.
With the help of mentors, fellows, YouTube, and no sleep I managed to get a lot of it to work, even if it wasn’t perfect.
Here is where I landed at the end of the 3rd week.
With such little time left I vowed to only polish from then on…a pact that held for about one day.
WEEK 04
The Final Week. We no longer had mentorship classes, and mentors were much harder to get a hold of, but with so much more time on my hands I got a lot more done.
This week I spent doing what I know best… ART. While polishing features and adding some nice to haves like animated UI, an intro sequence, a score screen, recording my own voice for audio, and of course a boss.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This fellowship was an amazing experience, and I learned a lot about how to properly build a game, and how to use blueprints. Coming from an art background code is very intimidating but blueprints make it much more approachable for people of any experience level.
Huge thanks to Epic/Unreal for making this fellowship happen, all the mentors, and all the fellows who participated. Special thanks to Jared, Ben and Corina for sticking with me through the final stretch.
Watch the trailer for my game here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NXUxUgtBTs
You did great, I loved watching your progression! Are you continuing to work on it?
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Maybe in the future, but for now I have another game I am working on, and many things to learn!