Overboard
Chaotic 4v4 pirate party game where players cooperate to keep their ship afloat while sabotaging the enemy crew.
Water Shader Graph - Voronoi-based stylized water
Explosion VFX
VFX & Gameplay Effects
Role: Technical Artist / VFX Artist
My work focused primarily on shader development, real-time VFX, and visual feedback systems supporting the stylized pirate aesthetic.
Overview
Overboard is a chaotic 4v4 pirate party game where players cooperate to keep their ship afloat while sabotaging the enemy crew. Players load cannons, repair damage, and sometimes "accidentally" push teammates overboard. Crews can also board enemy ships to disrupt their operations and create chaos. The gameplay emphasizes fast-paced teamwork, unpredictable interactions, and physical comedy.
Stylized Water Shader
To match the playful tone of the game, I created a toon-styled water shader inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker using Unity's Shader Graph.
Scrolling Water Motion
Instead of physically moving ships across a simulated ocean, the shader scrolls the water surface to create the illusion of movement. This allowed the boats to remain stationary while still conveying motion.
Intersection Effects
I added intersection shading so that boats and objects visually interact with the water surface. This prevents objects from appearing to float unrealistically on top of the water.
Procedural Animation Shaders
Flag Animation
Boat flags are animated using vertex displacement driven by sine wave functions. The shader performs simple real-time vertex deformation to simulate wind movement. This approach avoids skeletal animation and allows flags to animate entirely on the GPU.
Sail Simulation
I developed a more advanced vertex animation shader to simulate boat sails reacting to wind forces.
- • Vertex displacement driven by procedural animation
- • Gradient texture controlling deformation strength
- • Exposed parameters for designer adjustment
- • Transparency for player visibility behind sails
Stencil-Based Rendering Effects
I implemented several stencil-based techniques to improve gameplay readability.
Player Visibility
A stencil pass ensures that players remain visible even when partially obstructed by objects on the ship.
Boat Damage Depth Effect
I implemented a stencil-based shader to make ship cracks appear deeper and more dimensional. This required custom shader code, Z-buffer modifications, and render order adjustments within the URP pipeline.
Visual Effects (VFX)
I created several gameplay effects using Unity's particle system.
Cannon Impact
Stylized explosion with hand-drawn 16-frame smoke animation
Muzzle Flash
Visual feedback for cannon firing events
Dash Effect
Motion-based particles for player dash actions
Interaction FX
Lightweight effects for gameplay interactions