Artifacts is a 2-player co-op arcade shooter built in Unity 2D with Photon for online multiplayer. It started as a structured learning project following Blackthornprod's multiplayer development course, and became the foundation for developing my own art direction and design thinking in a multiplayer game context.
Role: Creative Director & Main Developer -- Status: Prototype, released in 2020
Duties: Game Design and Prototyping, C# Development, Unity2D Asset Management, Game Design Documentation
Available to play at Itch.io
THE DESIGN
The core multiplayer mechanic follows the course structure. Everything around it is original.
The VHS aesthetic (the scanlines, the color grading, the television frame, the visual noise) was built using Unity's Post-Processing stack and custom particle effects. All pixel art was designed and produced from scratch, including characters, environments, and UI elements. Both, following original creative direction.
The standout original mechanic: music tempo increases as players lose lives. A simple idea with a deliberate purpose where the audio becomes a pressure system that communicates urgency without adding UI clutter. The game gets louder and faster as it gets harder. Players feel it before they register it consciously.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Artifacts shipped as a prototype.
The enemy variety originally planned, different archetypes with distinct behaviors requiring coordination between two players, never made it in. That iteration is where the design work gets more interesting: building encounters around split attention and cooperative response to enemies that behave differently under pressure.