Why and when did you choose Unreal Engine for your game?When I started the project two years ago, I chose Unreal Engine because it was easy to learn and had the best lighting and graphics capabilities out of any other engine. Unreal Engine has all the tools needed to create stunning environments quickly, which was exactly what I needed for the environment art in my game.
The engine’s Editor provides tons of easy-to-use tools to optimize workflow and increase productivity, which is necessary to develop such a large project as a solo developer. I’m a programmer, but having the ability to also use visual coding with Unreal Engine’s Blueprints helped speed up development a lot.
Even though I’m responsible for a wide range of roles in the game’s development, from map designing to inventory system programming, I never really felt like something was out of reach for me with Unreal Engine. Everything is made to be optimized and accessible for developers, and with the massive amount of support and documentation for it, I feel like I can learn to do anything. It’s really freeing to use, and I love it.
Were there any gameplay mechanics you designed for the game?
Rōnin Trail is a game about wandering around and exploring new places, so traveling through the game’s world has to be interesting. To make exploration fun, I added survival mechanics like fishing, bug catching, cooking, and camp building as well as a variety of unique flora and fauna to populate the world. I used to play a lot of Animal Crossing and I always enjoyed the excitement I got when I saw a rare insect at the corner of my screen. It makes something as trivial as walking around interesting.
As a jobless rōnin, the player will have to find a way to earn money to pay for things like food, gate tolls, or boat trips. So I added plenty of quest-related mechanics, like the bounty system or random side quests. You’ll find these quests by talking to people or finding job listings on billboards.
Source: Unreal Engine Blog