Cipherbound

What it is

A tile-based creature-collecting RPG, in the shape everyone recognises: walk a map, talk to people, get into fights, win, save, continue.

None of that comes free in C++. There is no scene graph, no entity system and no dialogue runtime, so all of it had to be designed and written first. That is the actual subject of the project.

The systems underneath

Map and collision. Tiles carry their own walkability, so the world is data rather than a hard-coded set of walls, and a new area is a new file.

Turn-based battles. A state machine over turn phases, with moves, types and damage resolution kept separate from how any of it is drawn.

Dialogue. Scripted conversations that can branch and can change world state, so an NPC can affect the game rather than only print text.

Persistence. Save and load across sessions, which quietly constrains every other system: anything that matters has to be serialisable.

Why it won

TDT4102 is where most students meet C++ properly, and most projects stop at one working mechanic. This one is a set of systems with clean seams between them, each extendable without reaching into the others. It took Best Project in the course.