Pre-Production

Initial Ideas:

The previous team-oriented video game project that I worked on centred around a given theme – “resist”. This time, however, there was no theme forced upon us and so we had the freedom to create any game we desired.

Whilst having the privilege of being able to work on a project without restrictions is a positive, it isn’t without its downsides. I found coming up with ideas without a theme to follow particularly challenging, as there was a lack of focus to my ideas. Thinking of an open world RPG set in the era of cowboys one moment, then a space roguelike the next, often ended in confusion.

Therefore we got together as a team, after struggling to think of any solid ideas, and agreed that we should focus on a horror game. This gave us a much narrower focus and allowed our ideas to be less scattered.

With this newfound focal point, I was able to come up with a couple ideas – one of which I was extremely fond of.

It centred around a “second-person” mechanic in which the player would control two characters. One would be first-person and the other would be controlled through the view of security cameras – making it second-person.

Second-person games are rare, but they do exist. It involves the main character (the one being controlled by the player) being seen through the perspective of another character (Jeshibu, 2023).

The first-person character would have tasks to complete to help the person on the security cameras – who is being hunted by a monster. Furthermore, the CCTV footage would act like the old resident evil cameras and stay in a fixed position, which could create interesting opportunities to scare the player. For example, since the player would be unable to see what is around the corner, an enemy could appear when the camera switches perspectives.

Choosing An Idea:

After discussing all of our horror game ideas, we decided to combine aspects from all of them. My idea created the main mechanic for the game, as everyone seemed intrigued with the idea of a first and second-person game.

The first-person character ended up becoming a detective who is investigating an abandoned factory. Whilst there, he discovers a tablet that shows security footage of a sheriff from the past. Mysteriously, what is seen on the tablet also occurs in the detective’s present world.

Roles & Outline Of Levels:

As a group, we decided that the game should have four levels. The first level would be a short introduction to the plot and the main CCTV footage mechanic. Levels two and three would contain the majority of the content within the game, including puzzles and stealth sections. Finally, level four would conclude the game with a chase sequence, backtracking through the previous areas.

I agreed to work on the first and second levels whilst also creating concept art and 3D models for the game.

Level 1 Draft:

Before production on the game started, I decided to create a rough top-down view of what level 1 could potentially look like. The focus of this level was introducing the CCTV mechanic to the player and so I designed a level in which they cannot proceed until they have completed a simple puzzle involving the mechanic.

When introducing a new mechanic to a player, it is better to avoid lengthy tutorials as it ruins the immersion and some players may skip them – leading to confusion (Pears, 2018). Instead, I intend to utilise the environment to teach the player the mechanic by creating a puzzle that must be completed before progressing.

This doesn’t come without its own set of issues though. If players cannot complete the puzzle within a reasonable time it may lead to frustration. To counteract this, playtesting should be conducted in order to find the perfect balance of difficulty for the puzzle (Allan, 2017).

Adaptation:

As a group we had already started to cut and change our original ideas for the game.

For example, the monster was originally going to roam around each level and chase the player when spotted. However, we concluded that it would take a lot of time away from other important aspects of the game, such as level design, to code a complex enemy AI.

Instead, the monster will now only appear in the final level during a scripted chase sequence, which we believe should be more manageable to create.

Iteration is a huge part of designing games and levels, and whilst it is usually accomplished during the prototyping stage, in this case we iterated on an idea without the need to test it – as it did not seem viable (GDC, 2023).

Conclusion:

To conclude, together with my team we were able to construct an idea for a horror game with a distinctive mechanic. Deducing an idea was difficult at first before coming together as a team and deciding to give ourselves a smaller focal point – horror.

Furthermore, we also planned out the level structure of the game and each of our roles. It was important to complete all of these aspects before production started as it allowed each member to understand their jobs and create a week-by-week individual plan.

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