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Project “Darkest Skullgirl” was born as a personal challenge and portfolio piece. The goal was to recreate in Unity (and particularly its new UI Toolkit) the combat system from Darkest Dungeon 2 merging it with the Skullgirls franchise, in order to hone and showcase my UI/UX design, as well as game design and programming skills.
<aside> <img src="/icons/cursor_orange.svg" alt="/icons/cursor_orange.svg" width="40px" /> Try out an in-browser playable demo here!
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The choice of using Skullgirls comes from an appreciation of the franchise’s worldbuilding and characters, as well as asset availability. It would be interesting to further develop this demo to include more features in the future.
Cerebella in rank L1 selecting her “Lock n’ Load” skill and hitting Big Band in rank R1 with it, dealing 13 damage and pushing him back 1 position.
Cerebella in rank L3 selecting her “Lock n’ Load” skill and hitting Big Band in rank R1 with it, dealing 4 damage because half was blocked and pushing him back 1 position.
Darkest Dungeon 2 features a turn based, positional combat system where a team of heroes fight a team of generally eldritch-inspired opponents, typically 4 vs 4. During each of their turns, fighters can perform skills that deal damage, move or apply statuses to the targets, be it friend or foe.
Similarly, in Project Darkest Skullgirl, fighters from the franchise (in this demo limited to Cerebella, Parasoul and Big Band) have a loadout of 5 skills each, including a Taunt and a Blockbuster. Blockbusters are powerful skills that can turn the tide of a fight, but require a certain amount of Meter to be performed. Taunts don’t deal any damage, as they target the fighter performing them, but they grant above-average Meter and some positive effect depending on the character. All of these skills are inspired or based on moves present in Skullgirls (also due to availability of sprites and animations), but tailored to the quite different combat system of Darkest Dungeon 2.
The three characters featured in this demo each have their own signature gameplay, inspired by that of their original game, reflected in the skills of their loadout.
Cerebella is an acrobat wearing the living weapon known as Vice Versa (the hat), giving her an extra set of powerful arms and making her a balanced an excellent chunk damage dealer and grappler. To reflect this, her skills deal a good amount of damage and push opponents and Cerebella around, helping position them for other fighters. Additionally, her Taunt gives her Block and Riposte, respectively mitigating damage received by the next hit suffered and dealing damage back when next hit.
Parasoul’s fighting style is strategic and fencing-like. She scatters the flaming tears of her living weapon Krieg (the umbrella) around the battlefield, preparing to deliver crippling blows by means of sudden and precise critical hits or by detonating the tears. Her loadout in this demo features skills that apply a damage over time debuff and others that can deal high amounts of critical damage, but need time to cool down. Additionally, her Blockbuster detonates all opponents with a damage over time debuff, anticipating and amplifying damage they would have suffered over the next few turns.
Big Band, kept alive in a orchestra-based mechanical body plays as a typical “tank”, focusing on high amounts of health and defensive capabilities more than offensive output. In this demo, his skills require him to be in the front ranks and don’t let him target the backlines, but give him the ability to push back opponents to help allies focus their damage. He generally deals below-average damage, with the exception of his Blockbuster, but makes up for this by applying to himself Block and Taunt buffs, forcing opponent to target him when possible and allowing him to withstand the damage received. His Taunt also gives him a buff that stuns the next opponent he blocks, forcing opponents to skip a turn.
While the sprites and background come from Skullgirls, the UI is entirely custom, to mimic the style of Skullgirls while serving the gameplay of Darkest Dungeon 2.
From the blue panels and golden borders to the character portraits escaping their circular frames and the diamond-shaped skill buttons, all of the UI of this demo is made to echo the dark deco motifs of Skullgirls, particularly its Mobile version. The layout is instead widely inspired by Darkest Dungeon 2, as it serves a similar gameplay and need to convey a similar amount and type of information.