What is Verdant Engine?
Verdant Engine is a single player strategy roguelike, where the player controls a massive mech that has been possessed by a plant-like entity. The mech has a garden growing atop of its chassis, and the placement of plants influences its combat capabilities. The mech must make its way through the city, battling immense polluting factories, before defeating the central AI that keeps the factories running.
The game was showcased at Experiential Development & Games Expo 2025, Imagine RIT 2025, and Rochester Game Festival 2025.
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Core Gameplay Features
Verdant Engine combines roguelike replayability with strategic gardening mechanics:
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Plant Placement System – Position plants in the garden that rest on top of the mech’s chassis to dynamically change its combat capabilities.
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Tactical Combat – Engage in battles against colossal factories while balancing offense and defense.
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Replayability – No run feels the same. The map changes every game, with different combat encounters, events, and shop locations. Rewards for each encounter and the stock in the shop are also different each time.
contributions
As a Programmer & Designer, I focused on translating the design vision into functional systems, scripting core combat interactions, and ensuring that plant placement and artifacts shaped gameplay in meaningful ways. I also collaborated with teammates to refine mechanics, implement UI, and polish player-facing features through testing and iteration.
Technical Design & Architecture
As a technical designer, I played a significant role in scoping and translating rough mechanical ideas into actionable scripting tasks for our team. I collaborated on script architecture, helping establish a foundation of parent classes, namespaces, and helper functions to support development long-term.
Combat Systems
I took charge of the combat scene, scripting enemy behaviors, plant abilities, player weapon systems, and inventory. Combat was managed with a complex state machine that alternated between player and enemy turns. Each enemy featured unique attack patterns and AI logic designed to feel distinct yet predictable, enabling players to plan effectively.
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UI/UX & Presentation
I engineered all the GUI and UI for the game. (As I like to joke: “GUI is my curse—doing it well means I’ll be doing it until the day I die.”)
Additional Systems
I created a Save/Load system, which, while ultimately cut from the final build, provided a valuable exercise in persistent data management.
