Cucura-Purumã

The capstone game

Cucura-Purumã is the 2023 capstone project that Douglas Mareli and I developed for the Computer Science degree at UFF in Rio das Ostras. It is a complete 2D pixel-art platform game about Brazilian folklore, built from scratch in Unity and C# as both the final product and the subject of our academic work.

The story takes place in a forest threatened by illegal land grabbers and explorers. The player crosses the map, defeats the invaders and helps protect the forest before completing the level by defeating the boss and interacting with the final sign.

Systems and level design

I worked on the game's mechanics, narrative and code architecture while learning Unity's component-oriented workflow. The menus support starting a new game, loading a saved game and viewing credits, while the in-game menu exposes the inventory, saving and exit controls.

The project contains one level with three enemy types: warrior farmers, mages and archers. Indigenous NPCs help the player through the stage, and the final confrontation is with the Mula-sem-cabeça; all characters and environments use pixel-art sprites.

Learning Unity on a deadline

Building the capstone required learning Unity systems such as SceneManager, coroutines and physics while producing a finished game. The code also had to stay organized as mechanics and content were added during development.

The other constraint was scope: the project had to balance an academic investigation with a playable result on the university schedule. We concentrated the design into one complete level whose mechanics, folklore narrative and final encounter could be delivered together.