Rimland
Tags: Solo Work Game Development Award-winning
Date: Dec. 2017 - May. 2018
Awards: - First Place, Culture Creative Design Competition for College Students in Hubei Province (2018): 80,000 CNY (~$11,428);
- First Place, Graduation Project Competition (2018): 5,000 CNY (~$714).
An award-winning solo indie game project exploring a 3D-lighting pipeline for 2D pixel art, retro survival gameplay, and 8-bit-inspired audio.
GAME INTRODUCTION
Rimland is an exploration and survival indie game that I developed independently from scratch over several months. Inspired by the momentum of China's indie game scene around 2016, I used this project as an opportunity to strengthen my game development skills and gain hands-on experience across the full production pipeline. I created all major components of the game myself, including code, art, animations, gameplay design, and audio assets. Set in a wasteland punk-inspired world, the game places players in the role of adventurers who collect materials, manage resources, and fight dangerous creatures and bandits.
Game Arts
Game Arts: Game Poster and Game Scenarios
RIMLAND
Solo Work Game Development Award-winning
3D-to-2D Lighting System
One of the central technical experiments in Rimland was the integration of 3D lighting, shaders, and normal maps into a 2D retro pixel-art style. At the time, this approach was still relatively uncommon in mainland China's student and indie game development scene, and there were few readily available examples for reference. Much of the process therefore relied on iterative testing, visual experimentation, and problem-solving within the engine. The resulting visual style allowed the game to retain a pixel-art aesthetic while gaining additional depth, lighting variation, and material presence.
RIMLAND
Pixel Art Animations
A second technical focus was the animation workflow. Rimland used skeletal rigging and virtual armature techniques to animate pixel-art characters and objects in a way that could work with the game's lighting system. This approach reduced the need to manually draw large numbers of in-between frames, while still supporting smoother character motion and a consistent visual style. It also allowed me to explore a more efficient production pipeline for creating animated 2D game assets as a solo developer.
RIMLAND
Awards
In May 2018, Rimland received first place at both the departmental and institutional levels in the Graduation Project Competition at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts (HIFA) (approximately 1 selected from ~2,000 graduation works). It was later selected to represent HIFA's outstanding student works at the 2018 Joint Exhibition of National Top Institutions of Higher Learning in Fine Arts. In October 2018, the project also won first place in the Cultural and Creative Design Competition for College Students in Hubei Province, receiving a pre-tax prize of 80,000 CNY (~$11,428).
During the creation of the game's art assets, many of them were originally designed to support a sandbox base-building system. This planned system would have allowed players to construct their own bases by collecting and using in-game resources, which was part of the project's early design vision. Due to the limited development time available for a solo project, however, the sandbox system could not be fully implemented. This remains the main unfinished ambition of the project.
Game Arts: 2D Assets and User Interface
Video
Project: Rimland
The Page Last updated: May 23, 2026