when
July 2025
July 2025
type
3D shooter · Unreal Engine 5
3D shooter · Unreal Engine 5
team
3 · "Scary Game Devs"
3 · "Scary Game Devs"
time
5 days
5 days
my part
level · spawn system · lead
level · spawn system · lead
What it is
BandiA third-person shooter in two halves. Prepare by day: you wake up in a cabin with the controls written on the walls and a flashlight to read them by. Find a pickaxe, mine through the mountain for ammunition, then find and load a gun before night falls. Survive the endless night: enemies spawn after dark, and night never ends, so the objective is to stay alive as long as possible.▼
BandiTwo bars: a heart for health, a lightning bolt for stamina. A kill count in the corner. Normal mode, hard mode. When you lose, the screen goes red and says so.
What I made
BandiThe level: the cabin you start in, the valley, where the rocks go, where the trees go, what you can see from where. And the spawn system: the rules for when enemies appear, where, and how many. Which is the part that decides whether the game is scary or just annoying.
BandiI also ended up leading the team, mostly by writing things down and asking a lot of questions.
"When teaming up with [two teammates], you stepped up to lead the 'Scary Game Devs' to deliver an ambitious third-person shooter game in only 5 days. You created the top-class level and the spawn system in the game."— Charlie "Char", instructor · iD Academies Game Design Academy with Unreal Engine 5, Stanford University, July 2025 · certificate ↗
Screens
What I learned
BandiThree people, five days, one game. Before this, every game I had made was mine alone, so the first thing I learned was how a team actually works: splitting the game into parts we could each own, checking in every day, and trusting that the pieces other people were building would show up.
BandiTechnically, it was my first 3D game and my first time in Unreal Engine. I learned to build a level in it, place and light a world you can walk around in, and set up a spawn system that decides where and when enemies appear.
BandiThe hardest part was the last one: taking three people's work, the cabin, the valley, the weapons, the enemies, and merging it into a single game that runs. Making things is one skill. Making things fit together is a different one, and I didn't know that until this week.
