The Hollow Icon
Hopeful dark-fantasy life-sim action RPG
A Unity 6 RPG where a restorer hunts the improperly dead, rebuilds a mountain bastion, and chooses whether to heal corruption or wield what it remembers.
- Role
- Game director & engineer
- Built with
- Unity 6 · C# · UGUI · Editor tooling · Python
- Project dates
- 2026 - Present
overview
The Hollow Icon is an isometric life-sim action RPG set in a Balkan-Byzantine-inspired realm where sacred promises have lost their names. It combines authored multi-day journeys, readable combat, diagnosis and remedies, town restoration, relationships, calendar life, trophy crafting, and a persistent home hub called Hearthold.
problem
The project has to make two demanding fantasies strengthen each other: dangerous journeys must give practical meaning to the life-sim, while gardening, fishing, crafting, relationships, and restoration must visibly change the world rather than become disconnected chores. A large content surface also needs deterministic validation to remain buildable by a small team.
approach
I organized production around one canonical game bible, explicit milestone gates, stable content IDs, authored region validators, save round-trips, deterministic simulations, image-regression captures, performance probes, and packaged-player smoke tests. The current vertical slice connects diagnosis, gathering, gardening, cooking, fishing, relationships, travel, camp, boss combat, moral choice, crafting, restoration, and persistent consequences.
outcome
Milestones M0 through M2 are complete under the project's automated acceptance policy, and M3 is actively deepening Hearthold's life-sim. The macOS standalone build succeeds with zero C# errors and zero runtime exceptions in the latest packaged run. The project is not presented as release-ready; it is a verified, playable production foundation with a representative 60–90 minute Act I slice.
- 60–90 minute Act I vertical slice with persistent choices and town aftermath
- 228 items, 71 recipes, 32 enemies, 38 music cues, and 149 sound effects in the verified catalog
- Twelve-region campaign structure, Hearthold hub, final capital, and post-game foundation
- 38-stage advanced smoke suite, 25/25 image-regression gate, and clean packaged macOS build