Pinchiș Daniel

Forged in Shadows

A horror adventure game set in the Edo period where your goal is to help a former blacksmith.

Forged in Shadows was the very first horror game I ever worked on, set in a haunted blacksmith's workshop. It's where I learned the basics of Unity and figured out how to actually turn an idea into something playable.

What I Learned

• Unity Basics : importing assets, building environments, and getting things to run without breaking every five minutes.
• Lighting & Atmosphere : making shadows feel creepy instead of just dark.
• Scripting : doors that open, triggers that fire, all the small things that make a game feel alive.
• Problem Solving : every new feature meant Googling, experimenting, or breaking things until they finally worked.
• Collaboration : My friend Markus Mayrhofer helped with the design and arrangements, while I handled scripting, lighting, and some of the models. We used Unity version control.

Looking Back

This project was messy, frustrating, and super rewarding. I learned that horror isn't just about cheap scares, but about atmosphere, pacing, and detail. Even though Forged in Shadows is only a prototype, it's the project that got me hooked on making games.

Character Animations

A collection of my rigged and animated characters made in Blender.

My journey started with simple walk and run cycles and gradually evolved into more advanced animations like parkour and dance sequences. These projects made me better understand body mechanics, timing, and personality in animation.

What I Learned

• Rigging : learned how to create rigs, use and attach bones, controllers, and IK/FK setups.
• Movement Mechanics : creating believable jumps, vaults, and rolls as well as idle, walk, run and turn cycles with smooth transitions.
• Camera Usage : positioning, tracking and creating smooth movements to make the render feel natural.
• Animation Principles : applying timing, spacing, and flow across different styles of motion.

Looking Back

These animations started simple but gave me an idea of what I should continue to focus on. Working on these gave me a feel for how characters move and express themselves through motion. Best part was getting up from the chair and trying to mimic the movements myself to understand joint movement.

Disclaimer: Some assets are original creations, while others belong to their respective owners.

3D Environments

Environment designs and models created in Blender.

• Greek Temple Ruin was my first project where I experimented with environment design. I modeled a classical style temple, added surrounding details like trees, bushes, street lamps, vehicles and a path, and set it against a nighttime backdrop. My introduction to composition, lighting, and 3D.
• Snowday was a fun project where I worked with the environment more to create snow, water and mountains as well as snowed on pine trees.
• Hidden Ruins was my most recent project focused on setting the perfect scene for a fantasy sword using environmental props, lighting, realistic water, a glowing magic circle and god rays.

What I Learned

• Modeling Basics : building architectural shapes like columns, stairs, arches.
• Environment Composition : arranging props such as trees, signs, bushes, lamps, cars to make scenes feel alive.
• Lighting and Atmosphere : experimenting with spot, area and world lighting for each environment.
• Rendering : camera angles, depth of field, and render settings for best quality.

Looking Back

These projects were a big milestone because they were my first attempts at creating full environments rather than single objects. As fun as it was to create everything, I underestimated how hard learning to render properly without it taking hours is.