Time: 10 weeks
Role: Lead Game Designer, Programmer
Software: Unreal Engine 5, FAB assets, Autodesk Maya, Procreate, Mixamo
Date Completed: March 2025
This is a horror game about balancing the players ability to see and the players ability to hide from the monster.
Lighting system
When making this horror game, we wanted to have the player be chased by a monster while underground. We eventually decided on a cave, and I remembered a gift that my grandmother had given me for Christmas the previous year. It was a flashlight that could be wound up to manually charge it, and it made a whirring sound when you wound it up. The game now was focused on avoiding the monster while maintaining visibility using your flashlight. In order to maintain the fear levels of the game, I wanted to make it so the player had to keep maintaining the flashlight's battery. If the player's battery goes out, they won't be able to see as well and will be defenseless against the monster. However, if the player recharges the battery, they will risk attracting the monster to them.
Monster
This was my first time making a more complex enemy ai. The enemy needed to be able to see the player and more importantly hear them. I accomplished this by using Unreal engine's pawn sense component. I learned about the pawn sense component and how to use it by watching these two tutorials.
The players flashlight when charging uses the make noise function to alert the monster to the players presence. When the monster sees the player they move towards them and attack until the player is either killed or repels the monster with the flashlight.
Puzzle
The narrative of the game has the player finding different relics and then bringing them to a coffin at the start of the cave. Each relic is hidden behind the puzzle. While I did not design the puzzles I did implement some of them and the system they use.
The player uses a blueprint interface to communicate with any potential puzzle things. If it is an item that cam be picked up it adds that mesh to the one of the players hand sockets.
Each puzzle has a little hint that also appears on the players screen using the same interact system.
