Citrinian Night

Genre: Plataforma 2D | Shooter

Platforms: Windows PC

Year: May 2023

Citrinian Night is a 2D platformer game inspired by the gameplay of the classics Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. In this game, you will play as Citrina, a witch who has just awakened after centuries of confinement. In this demo version made for the national game jam CTRL ALT JAM, we have scenarios with combat, puzzles, and item and equipment collection.

Galery

My contributions

• Dev – Lead programmer, defining architectures for gameplay, interfaces, combat, and puzzles.

• Tech Artist – Acting as a reference for the artists, standardizing file sizes and formats, creating test scenes and gameplay scenes.

• Level Designer – Collaborating on testing, enemy placement, and puzzle difficulty balancing.

• VFX Designer – Creating visual effects and shaders to enhance polish and deliver strong visual appeal.

Tools and technologies

• Engine - Unity 2021.3 LTS.

• Version control - Git + Github.

• IDE - Visual Studio 2019.

• Others - Cinemachine, ShaderGraph, Animator.

Development process

The process began on Friday night, as soon as we received the available themes. We started a brainstorming session to decide between the options and, by Saturday, we had already defined the type of gameplay, the challenges, the story, and the characters—at least the foundation—to kick off development.

Technical challenge and focus on mechanics

During game jams, I like to challenge myself by creating everything from scratch and optimizing code and processes. Over the first two days, I focused on developing the core mechanics, guiding the team on technical and time constraints, and cutting elements that could compromise delivery within the tight deadline.

Monday: the real test

With a demanding routine that kept me away from home for twelve hours, I still found the energy to dive into the code at night. I shared progress with the team, reviewed reported bugs, and we followed the philosophy of progression over perfection. On Tuesday, I implemented the main character, animations, visual effects, and tested combat with enemies. One highlight was the idea of adding falling leaves to the character—a detail that gave personality and a touch of Castlevania to the project.

Puzzles and new learnings

I dedicated the fourth and fifth days to developing puzzles, an area I hadn’t explored before. It was a fun challenge without major technical issues, which allowed me to expand my skill set with ease.

Refinement and fixes

With the core mechanics completed, I began backtracking bugs and making targeted adjustments with the team. We also removed content that could compromise the final quality, ensuring a more solid delivery.

Finalization and QA

In the last days, the focus was on QA and small adjustments. We managed to set aside about five hours on the final day to calmly review everything and deliver a polished result.

Organization and version control

Versioning on GitHub was simple and efficient: each feature had its own commit in specific branches—gameplay/combat, menus/save system—while the main branch only received approved mechanics. Even in fast-paced projects, I maintain these best practices to make the process increasingly natural and sustainable.

Links

itch.io page - Citrinian Night

Credits

My great gamejam partners:

Leo - Sound and Game Designer.

Draguna and Amanda - Artists.

Tesla and Dyan - Game Designers and Narrative designers.