Combat Parkour

A fast-paced action game prototype combining fluid parkour, high-speed traversal, and arcade-style melee combat. Build momentum, chain attacks, and unleash Max Style to experience enhanced abilities and devastating strikes.

Role

Combat Designer

Game Designer

Level Designer

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Project Type

Personal Project

Duration

September - October 2026

Project Overview

Combat Parkour is a personal game design project focused on creating a fast-paced action experience built around the combination of parkour movement and aggressive melee combat.

The game uses an arcade-style gameplay loop that rewards aggression, variety, and maintaining a continuous flow.

It is heavily designed around different attack and movement combinations, allowing players to chain actions together and create their own combat flow.

The project combines combat, movement, enemy AI, the Style system, and movement-combat interactions into a cohesive playable prototype.

Design Goals

Arcade-Style Combat Loop

Build a fast and rewarding gameplay loop that encourages players to stay aggressive, maintain their Style, and continuously engage with enemies.

Reward Variety and Combination

Design combat around combining different attacks and movement actions, allowing players to create varied chains rather than relying on a single optimal combo.

Connect Movement and Combat

Make parkour movement an active part of combat by allowing actions such as sprinting, sliding, jumping, and dodging to naturally transition into attacks.

Easy to Understand, Hard to Master

Keep the core mechanics accessible while creating depth through timing, positioning, movement, and the player's ability to combine actions effectively.

Inspirations & References

Mirror's Edge
Influenced the parkour movement and traversal, particularly the idea of maintaining flow while moving through the environment.

Classic DOOM
Influenced the arcade-style combat philosophy, where aggressive play, constant movement, and chaining actions together create a fast and rewarding gameplay loop.

Combat Parkour - Level Design Plan - Tutorial 1 V1.jpg

Combat Parkour Project - Mini Boss Arena - Level Design V2.jpg

Core Gameplay

Combat Parkour is built around a fast-paced arcade-style gameplay loop that combines movement, combat, and player expression.

Players are encouraged to continuously move through encounters, combine different attacks and movement actions, and maintain their Style to increase their combat effectiveness and score.

The goal is to create a gameplay experience where movement and combat naturally flow into one another, giving players multiple ways to approach encounters while rewarding aggressive and varied play.

Combat & Combo System

The combat system was designed to give players freedom to create different attack combinations rather than following a single predefined combo route.

The system uses a shared combo structure that allows attacks from different inputs to be chained together, creating multiple possible sequences during combat.

This approach gives players more control over how they build their combos while keeping the underlying controls simple.

Movement & Combat Integration

Movement is designed as an active part of combat rather than simply a way to navigate the environment. Parkour actions can be integrated directly into attacks, allowing players to use movement to reposition, engage enemies, and create new attack opportunities.

Actions such as sprinting, sliding, jumping, and falling can transition into attacks, creating different ways to approach an encounter and maintain combat flow.

The goal was to make movement and combat feel like one interconnected system, rather than two separate gameplay mechanics.

Level Design & Encounter Space
(Tutorial)

1. Introduction Area

The tutorial area was designed to introduce the core gameplay of Combat Parkour, combining fluid movement, parkour, and melee combat into a unified experience.

Each section gradually familiarizes the player with the fundamental mechanics, establishing how movement and combat complement each other before introducing more demanding encounters.

The tutorial begins with a series of obstacles and wide corridors designed to introduce the traversal mechanics.

Multiple movement opportunities encourage players to experiment with parkour, discover different ways to navigate the environment, and build familiarity with the movement system before entering combat encounters.

2. First Encounter

The first combat encounter introduces Combat Parkour's one-versus-many combat design, challenging the player to face three melee enemies simultaneously. The space is built around a central pillar that gives players room to reposition, dodge incoming attacks, and use the environment to their advantage.

Rather than fighting all three enemies at once, players can move around the pillar to manage enemy positioning and create opportunities to engage smaller groups. The pillar also integrates parkour directly into combat, allowing players to wall-jump to escape pressure, reposition, or follow up with a powerful slam attack.

The goal was to establish how movement, environmental interaction, and melee combat work together, encouraging players to use the space strategically rather than relying on attacks alone.

3.1 Secondary Path

The secondary path introduces rail grinding, a traversal mechanic exclusive to Max Style, alongside the transformation's unique visual effects.

By rewarding players with additional score and a health kit, this optional route encourages exploration and experimentation with the player's abilities.

It adds depth to the level design, breaks the linear flow of the tutorial, and gives players an incentive to explore alternative routes while reinforcing the connection between traversal, progression, and the Max Style system.

Level Design & Encounter Space
(Boss Encounter)

The encounter was designed to bring Combat Parkour's core gameplay systems together in a larger-scale challenge, combining combat, parkour, and environmental navigation.

The level layout was built to encourage constant movement, create opportunities for evasion, and support the transition between the boss's different phases.

The goal was to create an encounter where the environment plays an active role in the fight, pushing players to use their full movement and combat abilities to survive.

1. First Arena

The first arena was designed around a small elevated platform that limits the player's available space and forces a direct confrontation with the Spider Mech.

This confined layout keeps the player under constant pressure, requiring them to stay alert, maintain movement, and react quickly to the boss's ground attacks and incoming rockets.

The goal was to create a demanding encounter where positioning, timing, and evasion are essential to survival.

Environmental elements were strategically placed to create additional opportunities for engaging the Boss and varying the player's approach.

For example, the pillar and partially recessed building between the central and elevated platforms introduce different spatial options, encouraging players to reposition, navigate the arena, and adapt to the boss's attacks rather than remaining in one location.

2. Chasing

When the Spider Mech reaches 50% health, it transitions into a chase phase, jumping between buildings while continuously firing rockets at the player's current location.

The player must pursue the boss through a parkour-focused environment while avoiding incoming attacks, with the chase ending once the player interrupts the boss's attack state.

The level design rewards players who manage to maintain their Max Style transformation during the first phase, unlocking alternative routes that make the chase easier.

For example, rail grinding allows players to pass directly through a building, providing cover from the incoming missiles instead of jumping between rooftops. A secondary building also contains a health kit hidden behind a destructible wall, accessible only by using the mechanical gauntlet during Max Style.

These interconnected routes and rewards reinforce the relationship between combat, traversal, and resource management, making the player's earlier performance influence how they navigate the encounter.

3. Final Arena

The final arena shifts the encounter back to a grounded fight, where the Boss becomes more aggressive and puts greater pressure on the player.

With very limited opportunities to recover health, players must rely on the skills developed throughout the encounter, reading attack patterns, anticipating incoming threats, and timing their dodges carefully.

The large pillars placed throughout the arena provide opportunities to create distance from the boss, reposition, and use cover against incoming rocket projectiles.

Meanwhile, the remaining health kit is located inside an elevated tunnel, forcing players to navigate the environment while remaining under attack.

These design elements create a risk-versus-reward challenge in which players must manage their positioning, use the environment strategically, and identify the right moment to recover health without losing control of the fight.

Style System

The Style System was designed to reward players for maintaining an aggressive and varied combat flow. Successful attacks and different actions build Style, while repeating the same attack patterns provides diminishing returns.

Higher Style levels provide stronger combat bonuses and increase the player's score multiplier, creating a risk-and-reward loop where players are encouraged to keep their chain going while avoiding damage.

The system turns combat variety into a meaningful gameplay decision: players can play safely and repeat reliable attacks, or take greater risks to maintain Style and maximize their effectiveness and score.

AI Design

Enemy AI was designed around a melee-focused combat style inspired by street fights, emphasizing close-range pressure, aggressive engagements, and constant player movement.

Enemies use coordinated positioning and controlled attack opportunities to challenge the player without simply surrounding and overwhelming them.

The goal was to create dynamic encounters where players must react to incoming attacks, manage their positioning, and combine combat and parkour to maintain control of the fight.

Boss Encounter

The boss encounter was designed to challenge both combat skills and movement, bringing together the core gameplay systems developed for Combat Parkour.

The encounter pushes players to master timing, evasion, and spatial awareness while adapting to the boss's changing attacks and phases.

As the fight progresses, new threats force players to rethink their approach.

In the second phase, the confrontation evolves into a high-speed chase through the environment, challenging players to combine parkour, traversal, and precise evasion while avoiding incoming rockets.

The goal was to create an encounter that use the full potential of Combat Parkour's gameplay design by seamlessly integrating combat and movement into a single, dynamic challenge.