Gotchi Guardians

This project will always be a great memory for me. This is the project website : https://www.gotchiguardians.com/

It started during the peak of the NFT craze, right after the Covid pandemic. Several companies approached me to involve me in their NFT game projects, trying to boost interest and value around their cryptocurrencies. Most of them were full of big promises and very messy ideas, but one project really stood out.

It was led by an exceptional person with many years of AAA game experience and an impressive portfolio. The project itself also felt fresh, playful, and full of imagination, something that many titles were missing at the time.

That is how I started collaborating with Pixelcraft on Gotchi Guardians, a multiplayer tower defense game built around their Aavegotchi currency and designed for competitive matches between up to eight players.

My work began with simplifying the 3D Aavegotchi models to make them more efficient and suitable for Mobile, PC, and Mac, and then pushing further to support WebGL and WebGPU, all in Unity. I optimized every single shader and model (including retopology and baking), and I created several workflows to animate environment elements and decorations using Vertex Animation Textures in different ways. I also created the textures for the bridges and rocks, and started work on the VFX.

Unfortunately, when the crypto market shifted, the project had to be scaled down, and I had to move on just as the game was approaching its Steam release. Even so, working on Gotchi Guardians and with the Pixelcraft team remains a very positive and inspiring chapter in my career.