Moodcaster
Moodcaster is a fantasy adventure game that uses facial emotion recognition to turn the player’s expressions into spells, challenging them to master their emotions as they explore and survive a monster-filled manor.
Moodcaster is a fantasy adventure game built around a unique emotion-based spellcasting system. Using MorphCast facial emotion recognition through the player’s webcam, the game reads the expression they are making and translates it into magic. Happiness produces light, sadness creates water, anger casts fire, and other emotions provide their own abilities.
Players take the role of a young mage completing their coming-of-age trial inside a dilapidated manor. To escape and become a fully fledged mage, they must learn to deliberately control their expressions, using different spells to explore the manor, battle its creatures, and recover three artifacts.
The manor is inhabited by smaller 2D monsters as well as larger 3D threats, including Lockjaw, a skeletal humanoid creature that prowls the halls, and Cerberus, who stalks the basement. Players have to explore while managing these threats, mastering their emotional spellcasting and ultimately finding their way out.
Project at a Glance
Dec 2024 - Apr 2025
Team Size: 20-23
Role: Producer
2nd Role: Game Design
Level Up Showcase 2025
Project Type: Capstone
Project Gallery
My Contribution
I was the main point of contact for the project at large. I made sure everyone knew they could come to me with a problem, and I’d either help solve it or track down the person who could. I kept everyone updated on where the game stood and what other teams were working on, tracked progress and deadlines, and worked with our Creative Director and Tech Lead to adjust goals and priorities based on where we actually were each week. I also coordinated schedules, registrations, undergrad availability, and whatever else I could anticipate to help development run more smoothly. On the design side, I worked on combat and systems design, our emotion-based spell mechanics, and game balancing.