Elementist
Final project for WPI IMGD 3000 B07: Technical Game Development I.
Elementist was envisioned as a 3D puzzle game. The player takes on the role of a wizard with a magic gauntlet, which holds special orbs. Each of these orbs controls one of the classical elements: fire, water, air and earth. The orbs can be combined to control other aspects of the environment (e.g. air + water = ice, earth + fire = lava). Objects in the world can be affected by the matching element. For example, the player could project a stream of water to turn a waterwheel, or control some rocks to create a bridge.
The game was written in C++ using Terathon Software's C4 Engine. I was lead designer, and I co-developed the game with my tech partner, working on the trigger recognition (knowing when the player is in range of a valid object), element matching, element selection, and particle effects.
Unfortunately, with the time constraints of the project, we weren't able to get many puzzles or animations into the game, so the whole thing is more of a tech demo/proof of concept than a game. Still, Elementist won the class "Most Novel" honorable mention, and received $25,000 in pretend-money investment out of a $1 million pool, as judged by a panel of faculty and industry professionals.