Ganesha: Guardian of the Portal

A third-person 3D action-adventure in a low-poly, flat-shaded mythic present-day South Asian festival world.

The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi is at its height when the sky goes dark, a supernatural portal opens over the centre of the town, and every reveller is taken. One player is left standing in the abandoned street. A divine symbol burns on the ground, pointing at the portal. There is only one thing to do.

What happens

Festival → Portal → Transformation → Eight Rakshasas → The Portal Lord → Home.

Walk the dark festival street to the portal. Fall through the cosmic tunnel. Be remade by a golden divine presence into an elephant-headed guardian with a crown, ornaments, a vermilion dhoti and a three-pronged Trishul — THE DIVINE GUARDIAN HAS AWAKENED. Then fight eight Rakshasas, one per arena, each stronger and each fought somewhere else: the Green Field, the Dark Forest, the Ancient Ruins, the Volcanic Battlefield, the Storm Temple, the Mystical Valley, the Ruined Temple, and the Portal Arena.

Each is its own enemy: the Forest Fiend teaches the fight, the Shadow Hunter dashes at your flank, the Stone Brute slams the ground and braces, the Flame Demon throws fire, the Storm Rakshasa teleports and calls lightning, the Swarm Rakshasa is fast and multiplies, the Ancient Destroyer is a boss that summons, and the Portal Lord has three phases — at half health the sky darkens and the portal grows, at a fifth it stops holding back.

Every attack in the game is telegraphed on the ground before it lands.

Take the Portal Lord down and the fight does not simply end: the portal destabilises, the sky brightens, THE DARKNESS HAS FALLEN, and the guardian walks back out into the town — which gets its lights, its drums and its people back, under a sky with Ganesha in it.

Controls

W A S D	move
SHIFT	sprint
SPACE	jump
MOUSE	camera
LEFT CLICK	Trishul Strike — light
RIGHT CLICK	Guardian's Cleave — heavy
Q	Divine Shockwave — area
F	Ganesha's Blessing — ultimate
E	interact
ESC	pause

How it is built

Everything is authored content of this world and loads with it:

• game.Game — the spine: the eight Rakshasas' health, speed, damage and behaviour; the eight arenas' ground, sky, sun and fog; the eleven quests; the guardian's four attacks; the shared run state; and the event bus the parts talk over.
• game.Director — the referee. Boots each part, runs the story machine, and owns the beats between fights.
• game.world.Stage — builds every arena, the festival town and the portal from that data, and re-grades the light per arena.
• game.hero.Hero — the guardian, its figure, and the four attacks, decided by reach and arc so a swing across the room does nothing.
• game.foes.Foes — the eight, each built from its own record.
• game.ui.Screens — the title card, the HUD, the quest line, the boss bar, the banners and the ending cards.

The geometry is generated as flat-shaded runtime meshes, so the look is a property of the code rather than of a texture.

May the festival go on.