← Back to portfolio Gilded Games · Coming to Early Access · 2026

Crown's Trial

A souls-like boss rush set across history's most memorable eras. I coded it solo, from an empty project file to a playtest build on Steam, while my brother handled the art.

StudioGilded Games
My RoleSolo Programmer
EngineUnreal Engine 5 (C++)
GenreAction, Souls-like, Boss Rush
Team Size2

Every boss in Crown's Trial is pulled from a different era of history, a crusader, a Sengoku-era samurai, a gladiator, and more to come, with the fight order left entirely up to the player. Each encounter is built around its own arena, loadout, and core mechanic.

  • Solely coded the entire game from inception, including combat, boss AI, UI, and the full moveset and hit-reaction pipeline for every fight, while my brother handled the art.
  • Authored a from-scratch, GAS-style gameplay ability system used for every boss and player ability, built specifically to understand Unreal's ability system architecture at a deep level rather than relying on the built-in plugin.
  • Designed a boss-order-agnostic encounter framework so any fight can be tackled first, with no hard dependencies between bosses or arenas.
  • Built the full localization pipeline supporting 11 languages, and integrated live analytics and bug tracking to guide the Early Access roadmap.
  • Ran the game through player playtests and demo iterations with a smooth, low-defect track record.