Njord's Embrace is a story driven roguelite RPG with short turn based combat, set in the Viking era and developed by Bird Island/ Portaplay. The game managed to reach a completed demo but its production is currently paused.

You play as Oluf, a farmer who is attempting to flee with his close family from Mord, who seeks revenge for the death of his henchman, after the bloody events that transpired at Unn's wedding (Oluf's daughter).

Engine: Unity

Platforms: PC

Development time: December 2024- May 2025 (Demo build)

I was tasked as the primary programmer for most of the demo's production, responsible for setting up the initial Unity project and creating or assembling the essential systems and tech packages from the company's internal repositories for e.g input , bootstrap and essential system initialization, scene loading etc. I further assisted the design team, by creating or tweaking existing development tools and peripheral systems that were necessary for enabling their work and adding content to the game.

Additionally I created and overviewed the scene hierarchy structure and guidelines for the project, and together with the design and art team came up with a pipeline for managing work passes between departments in scenes and how to handle and correctly work with navigation (navmesh). 

 Some examples of features/tasks that I worked with: 

• Scene management and system bootstrap.
• Player and camera controller setup for both the humanoid player and the ship. Camera management was done using Unity's cinemachine
• Scene navigation setup and baking guidelines in scenes
• Point-of-interest (POI) management system that allows the player to interact with events in the world.
• Interactable object system (connected with the company's graph based internal tool and the POI system mentioned above)
• 3D Animation controllers for combat purposes.

Technologies that I got familiar with during this project:

• Git subrepos (for handling syncing and custom updates of combat related systems across different projects)
• Cinemachine camera controllers
• Turn based combat architecture