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Project Babel was the most ambitious thing I'd attempted — a two-person, open-world 3D adventure built in Unreal Engine 4, running from early 2016 to mid-2019. The concept was simple on paper: a lone wanderer in a vast, desolate world, navigating ruins, solving environmental puzzles, and working toward the enigmatic Tower of Babel at the heart of it all. No dialogue, no hand-holding — just atmosphere, exploration, and consequence.
We built everything ourselves: high and low poly 3D models in Blender and ZBrush, textures in Substance Painter, vegetation with SpeedTree, and gameplay systems wired up through UE4 Blueprints. We got far enough to produce a teaser trailer and a playable vertical slice. Then we stopped. The scope was simply too large for two people working remotely, and version-syncing massive art files across continents eventually broke the momentum we'd built.
Babel was abandoned, and I'm at peace with that. What it gave me was a complete, end-to-end education in game development — from concept art to rigging, from level design to procedural mesh generation. The real lesson wasn't technical: it was learning to scope ruthlessly, test core loops early, and not fall in love with polish before the foundation is solid. Every project I've shipped since has been built on what Babel taught me by failing.
