Metroid prime x BioShock prototype

In 2025, like many other video game professionals, I was affected by the industry layoffs.

For 7 months, I have been fully dedicated to Clepsydre, a project born from my experiences, inspirations, and my desire to create a game I felt passionate about.

Metroid Prime + Bioshock + platforming/Parkour = Clepsydre

Pitch Deck

ClepsydrePitch
Clepsydre_BudgetDownload

Art Direction

Inspired by Bioshock infinite the Arcane league of legend serie and Expedition 33.

Project genesis

In 2017 I decided to go through a professional reconversion to work in the game industry. After attending business school and spending 3 years as a consultant at Accenture, I committed myself fully to this new career.

Around that time, Dishonored and Mirror’s Edge sparked my passion for level design. I have always loved games that offer a strong sense of freedom through traversal abilities, so I started a small personal project to replicate some of those mechanics.

While working on We Happy Few as a junior (the We All Fall Down DLC), I tried to capture that same sense of movement in my designs (The Water Treatment level was partly inspired by Mirror’s Edge). At the same time, I kept experimenting on my own project, drawing additional inspiration from Titanfall.

When playing Hollow Knight and Super Metroid, I was struck by how rewarding it felt to revisit the same spaces with new abilities and discover entirely different ways to navigate them. Ori and the Will of the Wisps illustrates this perfectly. By the end of the game, you can literally fly through areas you once struggled to traverse.

After playing Metroid Prime Remastered, I had a breakthrough. It felt like the ideal foundation for bridging parkour-focused FPS gameplay with Metroidvania design (the two genres I love most). To me, Metroid Prime only needed stronger traversal and movement abilities to approach the fluidity of 2D Metroidvanias.

Project description

Clepsydre is a Metroidvania FPS set in a Magepunk universe, between Metroid Prime and Bioshock. You awake as an automaton, reactivated for an unknown reason. Facing critical malfunctions, it must explore the ruins of a declining civilization and unravel the mysteries of its existence.

This complete prototype (~2 hours of gameplay), developed in Unreal Engine 5, is the result of 8 years of experience as a Level and Tech Level Designer (Compulsion Games, Eidos Montréal, Cloud Chambers, Runes Studio).

Everything was designed and scripted from scratch, with only two technical plugins:

  • Gameplay: Jump, dash, wallrun, grappling hook, rails, shoot, charged shoot, rockets, target lock, gravity gun, elevators, obstacles, gravity actors, interactables, triggers, etc.
  • Combat: 6 basic AI archetypes with a weak point system, 5 simple enemy scripts, and 2 boss fights for illustration.
  • Universe: A Magepunk world built with a complete homemade metric kit (over 200 meshes), placeholder conversations and cinematics.
  • Technical: Player UI, options menu, respawn system, save system.

All ingredients and systems are scripted to be systemic and can be easily reused and setup in the project.

I am convinced of the potential of this universe and its gameplay, and I hope to find partners in the future to help it grow.


Music by Ypsen: https://soundcloud.com/ypsen/tracks