Hi again! I’m Allie, and I was also the Props Artist for our game — in addition to designing the levels. In this devlog, I wanted to share how I approached building the props for our castle environment and puzzles, and what challenges came up along the way.

Environmental Props

A big part of my job was creating props that help bring the world to life. I modeled and textured a variety of assets to fill the space and make it feel like an actual lived-in, abandoned castle. Some of these included:

• Chairs, tables, bookshelves, benches, bars and levers, wall-mounted torches and shelves
• Fountain statues, barrels (and broken ones), pots (and broken ones)
• Swords and plaques to signal combat rooms
• An elevator and wooden bridge

To add extra storytelling and visual flavor, we also included picture frames on the walls that show concept art of our player, the enemies, and the original castle design — almost like forgotten memories of the game’s development world. It was a fun way to tie into the “Abandonware” theme.

Puzzle Props + Animation

Besides the environment props, I also created several pieces specifically for puzzles and gameplay mechanics. These included:

• Fire traps
• Laser machines
• Ice chunks
• Rotating tiles with a mechanical gear system

The rotating tile puzzle was one of the most complex. I created a system where each tile, when turned 90 degrees, would trigger animations for multiple parts:

• A wooden brick rises on the wall
• A metal gear rotates with it
• And once the correct orientation is reached, a gate opens to reveal enemies

There are four tiles total, each with their own synced animations, and making them all rotate in sync, and in the right direction, took a good amount of iteration. Each tile has three animations that need to play at the same time, and the logic behind syncing those while keeping everything smooth was one of the challenges I faced.

Matching the Environment Style

One important goal was making sure my props felt like they belonged in the world. Tyler, our Environment Artist, had already built a beautiful modular castle kit. So I studied his work closely, especially the textures and material language, and made sure my props matched his visual style. I paid attention to how he handled edge wear, grime, color tones, and even material roughness. It took a bit of trial and error, but I’m proud of how seamless the props feel with the environment.

Shader Work

As a bonus, I also got to experiment with shaders! I followed a water shader tutorial I found on YouTube and adapted it to fit our game’s style. It was a small touch, but seeing the water come to life added a nice bit of motion and mood to the level.