— PROJECT NAME
Praetor
— ROLE
Sole Developer & Designer
— ENGINE
Unity
— DATE
Aug 2022 - Nov 2022
Praetor was Josh's original concept for his master's thesis: Could one create a roguelike with as many satisfying facets as the classic Doom games? Below is a video of an early combat demo. Above you can see screenshots exploring the vast prototype level Josh built. Praetor features a body-part system in which the player swaps between different Heads, Arms, Legs, and Torsos to attach and modify their character. The prototype level is static, featuring a set of nine rooms, each with a different enemy, upgrade, or exploratory aspect.
While exciting to play and well received by the his small community, Josh ultimately decided to explore other concepts for his thesis, as Praetor's scope was far too high for a solo developer to achieve.
You can download and play Praetor for free, by clicking here.
Praetor was ultimately the result of an intense amount of experimentation. Having just finished work on Rock Hopper, Josh wanted to explore new aspects of technical design that he hadn't had the chance to before. These included dynamic animations, high quality visual effects, procedural animations, and a much higher bar for game feel.
The goal of Praetor was dynamic and loose. It was never intended to be a commercial product, but was far more Josh's first soiree into a higher quality of game development. It was a combination of high quality prototypes, each of which fit together into a larger whole. When Josh put the project down in November of 2022, he came away from it with an array of tools which allowed him to quickly and easily shift his entire design focus over to Godwalker in a weekend. To say that Praetor will never be touched again is not a guarantee. There is a 45 minute game within this prototype, and while it has some edges which need to be smoothed over, Josh was more than satisfied with the quality he was able to achieve in the time he had.
