Ruins Of Hestia

Team game built for the Gaming Campus Awards 25-26. My role: dev on the custom C++/Vulkan engine.

Context

Grand Projet Commun Bachelor 3A - 17 people across five departments (Tech, Art, Business, TV, Sound). Five-month production from January to late April 2026.

Concept

Hybrid management + action/exploration. You manage a Persephin village from an isometric drag & drop view, and run expeditions in a fixed isometric WASD view to gather resources, fight corruption and push Cali's story forward.

Five playable biomes (one per people), 5 hero classes, T1-T5 tier system on everything (resources, gear, traits), reroll via colored gems, embedded puzzles (Piano, Plate, Crate, Tangram, Memory), endless mode unlocked after zone 16.

Stack & engine

C++20, Vulkan 1.3, CMake + vcpkg. Custom engine: 5 libs (Framework, Render, Audio, Assets, Engine ECS) + scenes. Graphics pipeline with GLSL/SPIR-V shaders, compute pipeline for GPU particles. Tile-based procedural generation for expedition maps.

Links

Private school repo. No public demo before the final delivery on 29/04/2026.

Pitch

Cali, a humanoid creature from the Primoris people, crash-lands on the planet Hestia after an engine failure. She wakes up with no memory, taken in by the Persephins. With the help of Iris, a brave young Persephin, she discovers the planet is being torn apart by the Harmathys corruption - a defense mechanism triggered by the Primoris arrival, turning the once-peaceful inhabitants into aggressive creatures.

Genre & gameplay loop

Hybrid village management + action/exploration expeditions. The player alternates between two phases:

┌──────────────────┐         ┌──────────────────┐
│  VILLAGE PHASE   │ ◄─────► │ EXPEDITION PHASE │
│ (iso management) │ cycles  │   (action WASD)  │
├──────────────────┤         ├──────────────────┤
│ • Drag & drop    │         │ • Combat         │
│ • Buildings      │         │ • Puzzles        │
│ • Population     │         │ • Resource farm  │
│ • Heroes         │         │ • Bosses         │
└──────────────────┘         └──────────────────┘

Each expedition consumes a village cycle (1 ration per villager). The village expands from 3×3 → 10×10 parcels of 7×7 tiles thanks to map fragments brought back from expeditions.

Universe - 6 peoples

People	Region	Traits
Persephins	Central plains	Nomadic traders, social
Yōtl	Sand dunes	Warriors, honor code
Arynes	Crimson forests	Artists, festive
Kaprass	Mountains	Astrologers, secluded
Khétus	Coasts	Navigators, fishermen
Primoris	Space	Colonizers, advanced tech

Five peoples = five playable biomes with their own resources, enemies and atmosphere. The Primoris are the unwitting cause of the corruption.

Village mechanics

Five core buildings:

• Tree of Life - Central building, caps the level of every other building
• Housing - Raises villager capacity
• Hospital - Purifies corrupted villagers + heals heroes
• Forge - Crafts equipment (T1-T4) + rerolls stats via gems
• Barracks - Sends out excursions (1-3 heroes, autonomous)

Expedition mechanics

• 5 biomes × 4 zones + Endless mode unlocked after zone 16
• 5 hero classes: DPS, Tank, Healer, Gatherer, Treasure Hunter
• T1-T5 tiers on resources, gear and traits
• 6 gem colors for reroll (colorless = base material, colored = lock a trait)
• 5 puzzle types: Piano, Pressure Plate, Crate-Plate, Tangram, Memory
• Rich stat system: armor, strength, speed, fortune, luck, crit, combo, chain, range…

Tech stack

Tech	Version	Role
C++	20	Core language
Vulkan	1.3	Graphics pipeline
CMake	3.20+	Build system
vcpkg	latest	Dependencies
GLFW	3.x	Windowing
GLM	latest	3D math
RtAudio	5.x	Audio
stb_image	latest	Textures

Custom engine split into 5 GPC libraries: Framework (clock, transform, state machine), Render (Vulkan, textures, shaders), Audio, Assets (loader, macros), Engine (full Entity-Component-System pattern).

Tile-based procedural generation for expedition maps: pick a zone shape → link entry to exit → close walls → represent rooms as a tree for puzzles → collapse rooms.

Team & context

17 people spread across 5 departments: Tech, Art, Business, TV/Multimedia, Sound. 154+ commits on the code side.

Gaming Campus Awards 2025-2026 project - Bachelor 3A validation.

Date	Milestone	Status
03/02/2026	Pitch	✅
25/02/2026	MAAV (composers)	✅
27/02/2026	Pre-production	✅
29/04/2026	Final	⏳