Blood Lavender
Blood Lavender
Made in collaboration with Linzhi Wei.
Blood Lavender is a Unity third-person action prototype and academic project developed during my MSc Computer Games Programming at Goldsmiths, University of London, for the Games Programming 1 module.
The project is a demake and successor to White Lavender, a bug-themed Souls-like game. Rather than simply recreating the original, the project was designed as both a conceptual and chronological successor. The team analysed the original game and used player feedback from Steam reviews to identify areas that could be improved, while positioning the story and characters after the events of the original.
Itch.io · GitHub Repository · Academic Report
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Play Blood Lavender directly on itch.io
Project Overview
Blood Lavender was developed as a collaborative game programming project, with the primary objective of producing a playable successor to an existing Souls-like title rather than designing an entirely unrelated game.
This gave the project two connected design goals.
The first was conceptual succession: examine the original White Lavender and use player feedback to identify opportunities to improve its gameplay and overall experience.
The second was chronological succession: create a continuation of the original setting, with the game’s story and character design taking place after the events of White Lavender.
This made the project both a programming exercise and an exercise in analysing an existing game’s design before making informed changes to it.
Academic Context
Blood Lavender was produced for the Games Programming 1 module of the MSc Computer Games Programming programme at Goldsmiths, University of London. It therefore served as an academic piece of work as well as a playable game prototype.
The project was developed collaboratively with Linzhi Wei, with the work focused on producing a functional third-person action experience while investigating how the design of an existing Souls-like game could be adapted and improved.
The accompanying academic report documents the project’s design, development process, implementation, evaluation, and conclusions.
Read the full academic report →
Design Direction
The project was based around the idea of taking an existing game and developing a successor rather than starting from an entirely blank design.
White Lavender provided the initial reference point for the game’s mechanics, tone, and setting. Blood Lavender then used that foundation to explore how a successor could respond to criticism and feedback surrounding the original.
Steam reviews were particularly important to this process, providing player feedback that could be analysed before deciding which aspects of the original experience should be retained, changed, or expanded.
This approach helped connect the programming work to concrete design reasoning rather than treating the implementation as an isolated technical exercise.
Third-Person Action Gameplay
Blood Lavender is built around a third-person action presentation, with the player character navigating the environment and engaging with enemies through combat.
The prototype was designed to support the conventions associated with its Souls-like inspiration while adapting those ideas into a smaller academic project.
The result is a playable prototype intended to demonstrate the interaction between movement, exploration, combat, animation, and encounter design rather than a complete commercial-scale game.
Unity Development
The project was developed in Unity, providing the runtime, scene system, component architecture, animation integration, physics, and tooling required to assemble the prototype.
The development process involved combining Unity’s existing systems with custom gameplay logic to create the interactions required by the game.
As an academic project, the implementation was also an opportunity to apply game-programming concepts in a complete playable context rather than testing each mechanic in isolation.
Combat
Combat forms a central part of the Blood Lavender experience.
The game’s Souls-like inspiration places emphasis on deliberate player interaction with enemies, making combat logic closely connected to movement, animation, timing, and encounter design.
Rather than treating combat as a standalone mechanic, the prototype integrates it into the broader gameplay loop, where the player’s movement and actions are continuously connected to the state of the character and the surrounding enemies.
The prototype therefore demonstrates the practical challenge of coordinating multiple gameplay systems around a single interaction model.
Working from an Existing Game
One of the more distinctive aspects of the project was the decision to use an existing game as a starting point.
This changed the development process compared with a conventional greenfield prototype.
Instead of asking only “What mechanics should the game contain?”, the project also asked:
- What worked in the original?
- What did players dislike?
- Which conventions should be retained?
- Which mechanics could be improved?
- How should a sequel preserve continuity while still providing a different experience?
The use of Steam reviews provided an external source of player feedback that could be incorporated into this evaluation process.
Narrative Continuity
Blood Lavender was also designed as a continuation of White Lavender rather than a simple reinterpretation.
The story and character design are positioned after the events of the original game, allowing the project to function as a chronological successor as well as a mechanical and conceptual one.
This influenced the game’s overall direction and provided a reason for the project to retain elements of the original while introducing its own interpretation.
Collaborative Development
The project was developed in collaboration with Linzhi Wei.
Working as a pair introduced another dimension to the development process, requiring the game’s design and implementation to be developed collaboratively rather than as an entirely individual technical experiment.
This also made the project useful as an exercise in applying programming and game-development workflows within a shared production environment.
Academic Evaluation
Because Blood Lavender was produced as coursework, development was accompanied by formal evaluation and documentation.
The academic report provides a more detailed record of the project’s development and the reasoning behind the design and implementation decisions.
The portfolio presentation is intended to highlight the resulting game and the most relevant development considerations, while the report provides the fuller academic discussion.
Technical Details
Engine: Unity Language: C# Perspective: Third-person Genre: Action / Souls-like Development: Collaborative Project Type: Academic coursework Module: Games Programming 1 Programme: MSc Computer Games Programming Institution: Goldsmiths, University of London Source Material: White Lavender Distribution: WebGL / itch.io
Project Outcome
Blood Lavender resulted in a playable third-person action prototype that combines programming and game-design work with an analysis of an existing game.
The project is particularly useful as an example of development where technical implementation was shaped by an established design reference and external player feedback, rather than purely by original feature ideation.
The final prototype is available to play through itch.io, while the source code and academic documentation provide additional detail on the project’s implementation and development process.
Development Period
December 4, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Academic coursework project — MSc Computer Games Programming