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FELLCHASER is a PC roguelike action game developed in Unreal Engine 5 as a capstone project at UCI. Players brew volatile potions, chain explosive combos, and fight through Purgatory after stealing Death’s scythe. The game released on Steam for free, reaching over 50,000 players.
Designing Explosive Potion Combos – My main focus was designing a modular potion system that let players create their own chaos. Every tag, ingredient, and effect had to stack cleanly to form a web of synergies that made experimentation intuitive and satisfying. By iterating on how tags combined, I built a system where expression naturally emerged from play.
Designing Enemies that Challenge Player Thinking – Each enemy archetype was built to test a specific part of the player’s kit. I treated combat encounters like puzzles so that players weren’t just reacting to attacks, they were learning how to use their dash, melee, and potions in rhythm. Each new enemy forced a shift in tactics, keeping every run dynamic.
Developing Morale as a Designer – Beyond systems, I cared deeply about team energy and alignment. I created weekly presentations that mixed humor with clarity, helping teammates visualize features, give feedback, and stay motivated. This habit made me realize that good communication is a design skill and it keeps systems, people, and goals connected.
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Designing for Explosive Potion Combos
Design Goals
Create a potion system that lets players experiment and discover emergent effects.
Make each run unique by encouraging creative and expressive combinations.
Guide players toward satisfying “explosive” interactions while maintaining clarity.
Expression Through Potions
Players didn’t just want potions that hit harder they wanted potions that felt theirs. The fantasy was about experimenting, breaking the rules, and watching chaos unfold in exactly the way they planned.
Players should feel clever and powerful through discovery, not repetition.
Make combinations easy to read, rewarding to create, and satisfying to unleash.
Embody chaos and fun; “What if I could brew a nuclear bomb in a bottle?”
Each potion had to tell a story of experimentation and mastery. The more players mixed, the more they understood the system’s logic. If it didn’t fuel creativity or reward experimentation, it didn’t belong.
Building the Tag System
To support expression, I designed modular tags that could combine in meaningful ways.
Each tag would have clear triggers: on-hit, on-kill, lingering, or status effects.
Tags had archetypes (stunning, explosive, contagion, turret) which let players predict and plan interactions.
Multiple tags could be on an item to create emergent effects, e.g., Bloody Shroom (Stunning + Contagion) spreads effects on kill, encouraging chain reactions.
it became modular, visual, and intuitive, letting players craft explosive combos with both single ingredients and multi-tag combinations. Players could experiment confidently, seeing direct feedback from their creative choices.
Iterating on Synergies
Early testing showed some tags dominated while others were ignored.
The goal: every tag is useful individually but synergizes best in combinations.
Folded or modified overpowering tags molded them into cohesive archetypes.
Underused tags were removed or balanced to give clear use cases or synergies.
Added ingredients to support new tags which encouraged experimentation.
Iteration ensured emergent strategies were meaningful without breaking clarity. Players felt rewarded for discovery rather than random chance.
Guiding Players Toward Fun
Potions were the reward loop that drove the entire game. I wanted players to chase fun, not just power. The solution was to make the most expressive and synergistic tags also the most rewarding to discover.
Multi-Tag Ingredients → Acted as “combo starters,” inviting players to experiment and uncover chains of synergy.
No Currency → Every trade or skip carried real tension and each decision mattered.
Explosive Combos → A single ingredient could tip a potion into chaos, sparking chain reactions and flashy effects.
Players naturally gravitated toward explosive builds. The game quietly rewarded creativity, teaching players through discovery rather than direction. The end result of the potion system allowed for the most fun actions became the most rewarding ones.
Postmortem / Lessons Learned
Reward Creativity Through Systems
When the most fun interactions are also the most effective, players naturally gravitate toward mastery, creating emergent gameplay moments like explosive chain reactions.
Tags as Intuitive Systems
Well-designed tags let players read, predict, and experiment with potion effects on their own. By encoding synergy and counterplay into the ingredients, players learned the rules through play instead of tutorials, making discovery feel natural and rewarding.
Developing Enemies
Design Goals
Create enemies that persuade players to take certain actions and eliminate space.
Make the most out of the least amount of art.
Create enemies that would be fun for players to play around.
Artillery Enemy (Vigil)
I programmed the vigils behavior to act similar to artillery and take up space but stand close.
They are perfect targets for potions and its nice to fight ranged with ranged.
Variants are much more aggressive and attack in a triangle pattern all at once, allowing for more dangerous encounters.
Melee Enemy (Gulas)
These balls of death love to be unpredicatble and get up close to you. They were intended to force you to use your dash to get away from them.
They are stunned by melee combos so its suggested to use space to your advantage.
Variants are able to dash away from you when you combo them and have more powerful attacks.
Projectile Enemy (Saxum)
Saxums were intended to be cute but dangerous enemy. They slowly bring you down from afar.
Saxum like to sit in corners and split up, makeing them inefficent targets for potions. They were designed so players would have to decide if pursuing them was worth the risk.
Variants are much more aggressive, running straight towards you and blow up. This change of tactics is sure to surprise some players into dangerous situations.
Tuning Combat
Design Goals
Should feel good just to run around.
Players should be using melee for the purpose of using the potions.
Make it intuitive to group enemies up but allow for player expression through their build.
Combat Loop
Wanted the player to feel super agile so I gave them a quick 3 hit combo and fast dash
Melee combat is there to suppliment potion throwing. This is further pushed by having the player regain their potion charges by hitting enemies with melee.
Players are locked in place during attacks to force the player to take on more risk for longer combos. It cause the fights to be less fluid but more intentional.
A successful combat loop consists of space management and pushing enemies together to create a better target for the potions.
Weekly Standups
Design Goals
Inform team members of other departments what was new.
Give options for implementation and discuss them.
Have fun and keep everyone entertained in the project!
Presentations
I created presentations for fun to show off during our standups each week. I thought just verbally saying the updates was too boring and loved to get people involved.
Created graphics to better show off were the process was at that moment.
Being able to get everyone's feedback on a feature was really good for overall team dynamics.
Made people laugh and have fun with some of the more silly slides.
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