Gigaya was a sample game that I have been working on in my last period at Unity Technologies. The project was an ambitious sample game that mimicked the development process from beginning to end, though it was never intended for commercial release.

Mid-2022, the project was unfortunately stopped and our whole team made redundant. As such, what you see on this page is only the things that were public at the moment of its cancellation.

To get in the mood, this is the trailer we presented at GDC 2022. Try to watch it fullscreen and with the audio on!

My role

I was the technical lead for the project, and as such, in charge of all technical decisions. Together with the producer on the game, Victoria Polyak, we were also the point of contact of the team with the various R&D teams in Unity.

The Gigaya team was composed of another 15 people including a producer, artists, and another 3 programmers. I wrote code for the gameplay camera system, the save system, enemy and wildlife AI, and the scene loading and streaming.

This one, for instance, shows my work on the flying minion type we had. It would initially perch on stalks, and could easily move from location to location, including rooftops. If it spots Wondu, the protagonist, it would attack him with its acidic spit. Model by Juan Puerta, animations by Jason Robertson.

Another enemy I curated was the Hog. This beast has a cone of vision, detecting Wondu only when he’s directly in front of it. If so, it will charge and hit with his horns if close, or enter a roll attack when it sees Wondu from the distance. Model by Juan Puerta, animations by Jason Robertson and Jais Bredsted. Look at him!

Finally, this shows some of the work I’ve done on cameras. Extending Cinemachine, I created some ready-to-use camera volumes that our level designer could easily drop in the scenery, to create different specific camera situations: a confined space, a camera on rails, a fixed point of view. All of this configurations gracefully handled the transition in and out of aiming mode, so that the player could enter the volume, aim inside it, rotate 180˚, and when releasing the aim button the camera would just go back to the custom volume angle, but avoiding sudden confusing turns.

In addition to this, as a lead, I was looking after the build pipeline and making sure it was always functional, publishing builds that our QA team was going to test.

For even more details on Gigaya and my role on it, I gave a talk at GDC 2022. Also, my colleague Ben McIlmoyle made a quick recap video about the project just before it was cancelled.

Finally, some more beauty shots from the game:

Despite me showing all these screenshots, keep in mind that Alitt Khaliq (art director), Elliott Cottell and Francisco Cruz III (environment, props), Stefania Heeris (lighting), Bruno Gagné and Marie Guffroy (particles) and the animator and character artist cited above; are the ones mostly responsible for the look of the game. Bravo to them! 👏🏻

Legalities
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