Crimson Knight by Squinky Studios
Crimson Knight is a Soulslike boss fight game inspired by Elden Ring, being developed by a team of 18 students and 10 contractors at Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA).
The team constitutes a multidisciplinary workforce of programmers, technical designers, level designers, 3D artists, technical artists, and project leads.
From day one, we were clear about one thing that we didn’t want to build an entire game, compromising quality — we wanted to build one unforgettable boss fight, and make it feel as polished and intense as anything you’d find in a AAA title.
Roles and features owned:
AI Programmer
Pattern recognition system
Hierarchical State tree for AI
Modular GAS-State Tree Messaging Layer
Technical Design
I built a learning system using n-gram pattern recognition and integrated it into the that analyzes the player’s attack patterns during the fight and adjusts the boss’s counters accordingly. This made the boss feel more reactive and adaptive — not just hard, but aware.
I worked as the AI Programmer on the team. My main responsibilities were designing the boss’s behavior using Unreal Engine’s State Tree and integrating it with the Gameplay Ability System (GAS) to make the combat feel adaptive and fluid.
After thorough analysis, I chose to implement the AI using State Tree instead of conventional Behavior Trees, which are stateless in nature and more performance-intensive due to their per-tick evaluation.
A LinkedIn post by my programming lead, Aditya Sinha (Squinky Studios), about the predictive AI model we built ended up going viral — far exceeding our expectations.