Creating Enemies for the Hangriverse

Hey, Hangry community!

This week, we’re diving into a major milestone in the development of our game—introducing our very own enemies! After months of testing with placeholder aliens, we’re excited to bring our unique foes to life in the game. These creatures will challenge players in ways that align with the world we’re building, making the gameplay even more immersive.

We’ve been hard at work developing these enemies from scratch, and today, we’re walking you through the entire process, from modelling to integrating the final animations into our test levels. To give you an inside look, here’s a video that details every step, but let’s break it down for you.

Creating a believable enemy starts with modelling the mesh—the 3D structure that forms the foundation. Using Blender and Unity, our team meticulously designs each creature, ensuring that the shapes fit within the game’s visual style. This is where we give our enemies their distinctive look—whether it’s spiked shells or multi-limbed beasts. The aim is to balance a unique design with one that feels naturally integrated into the Hangry universe.

Once the base model is ready, we move on to texturing, which brings the enemy to life visually. Using Substance Painter, we apply textures that give the creatures a realistic or stylized appearance, depending on the feel we want to achieve. From slimy scales to metallic plating, these details will help create a sense of depth and personality, making each enemy feel like a real threat in the game.

Rigging is where things get technical. This is the process of creating a skeleton for the model, so it can be animated. We ensure that the rigging is done carefully to accommodate various movements and attacks. It’s essential to get this part right because it affects how fluid and natural the enemy’s motions will appear during gameplay. The more complex the rig, the more dynamic the animations can be.

The next step is all about animation. With the rig in place, we start creating short animation loops that dictate how the enemy behaves in the game. This includes everything from idle animations when the enemy is waiting to strike, to attack and death sequences. We’ve worked on making each enemy’s movement feel distinct—some will lumber toward you, while others will leap with terrifying speed. You can check out the process in more detail in our video here.

Finally, once everything looks good, we integrate the enemies into our testing levels. This is where the real magic happens as we ensure that the new enemies interact with the game’s environment and mechanics as intended. We’ve been running rigorous playtests to make sure the AI works well—enemies should react to player actions, navigate the environment smoothly, and offer a balanced challenge. It’s been a rewarding process seeing these creatures come to life in the game.

Now that our pipeline for creating enemies is set, we’ll be tweaking their behaviour and difficulty in future sprints. We’ll also be focusing on introducing more enemy types to add variety to the game’s combat experience. The journey from placeholders to fully-fledged enemies has been long but incredibly fulfilling, and we can’t wait for you to meet these creatures in the game soon. Hangry Andys finding the joy in animating again... it's been a minute.

Stay tuned for more development updates, and as always, follow us on socials to stay in the loop. If you haven’t yet, watch the full video to see how our enemies are created, from start to finish: Watch Here.

Until next time, stay Hangry!

Hangry HQ – Where Gaming Meets Giving