Game Writer - Narrative Designer
An AAA-experienced writer striving to craft stories that stick with you long after the credits roll.
Under The Heavens
GENRE
Interactive Story Game
TIME
4 Weeks
ENGINE
Unreal Engine
MY ROLES
Solo Project
INSPIRATIONS
Amnesia
Call of Cthulhu
Single Player
PC Game
10 min
GAME OVERVIEW
Concept
Inspired by games like Amnesia and Call of Cthulhu, this first-person storytelling game tells the tale of a man who suddenly wakes up in a surreal realm, completely abandoned. The story gradually unfolds, uncovering the path back to reality.
My biggest takeaway
This project was a challenge I learned a lot from since it was a solo project which made it an extremely educative experience.
Game Objective
The player spawns in a natural landscape and must find a way to return home. Through exploring, interacting with objects and solving a puzzle the player can beat the game. Gameplay is focused on finding key items and diary pages which guide the player on how to progress and ultimately find the solution to the puzzle that opens the portal leading back home.
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Progression
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The diary reveals the location of the grave and the bedroom key.
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The blue fireflies guide the player to the grave and to the blood trail.
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The blood trail leads from the grave to the area with the shovel and the gate.
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The fires show where the shovel and gate are located.
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The shovel digs up the bedroom key from the grave.
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The key opens the locked bedroom door.
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The torn paper in the bedroom reveals how to solve the puzzle and where the skull key is located.
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Putting the skull key in place and solving the puzzles enables interaction with the portal and triggers the epilogue.
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NARRATIVE DESIGN
The Diary
Some backstory is conveyed through the diary, but I wanted limit the amount of lengthy chunks of text and keep the narrative connected to gameplay. Therefore, I made sure the diary contains information on how progression is made in the game. Below you can see a couple screenshots. The image to the left is the very first diary page the player finds in the game while the image to the right is the final one.
FIRST DAIRY PAGE
The first diary page intends to give the player some backstory as to what happened to the poor soul who wrote it, but also hint at how to progress. The first paragraph is mostly lore and backstory while the second paragraph is connected to story progression.
FINAL DIARY PAGE
I believe it is important not to get repetitive in writing. With that in mind I wrote this diary page in the form of a rhyming riddle. Cracking the riddle reveals the solution to the final puzzle the player needs to solve in order to open the portal that leads back home.
AUDIO DESIGN
Sound effects
The SFX in this game are an important part of the unsettling feeling I was going for. Sound effects like the monster scream, footsteps, door openings and such have been arranged, revamped and mixed in FL Studio, and I found these specific sound effects on free sites online.
But the biggest challenge audiowise was the voice acting. Since this was a big part of the game, I decided to record the character's lines myself using a software called FL Studio.
Now, I am by no means a professional voice actor, but I do feel like the voice overs added to the game experience at the end of the day. I wanted the player to really feel what the character was feeling, and I believe I managed to achieve that.
I used the TDR's Kotelnikov Compressor to get a nice dynamic range on the voice overs.
By rolling off some of the high-end frequencies I managed to keep the presence and warmth of the voice overs. I also added some compression and reverb, but keeping the reverb very light to keep the sound tight.
Soundtracks
I believe less is more when it comes to soundtracks in a game like this. With that in mind, no music will play for the most part of the game. Instead, my aim was to establish a feeling of abandoned and unsettlement, so I implemented realistic ambient sounds like wind blowing, whistling of crickets, the wind caught in the trees and such. With that being said, I did make one soundtrack which plays in the main menu and during the epilogue of the game.
Lo-fi but not Lo-fi
Obviously I aimed to keep the soundtrack in tone with the game's unsettling, mysterious feeling. When making the track I realized it had a hint of lo-fi - especially since it contained vinyl scratch noises. However, I did find the tune to be appealing inspite of its lo-fi nature and decided to keep working on it. Using plugins like Vital and Sytrus contributed to the melancholic feeling while adding effects like slight detuning and a flanger to the guitar preserved the lo-fi nature of the track.
WORLD & LEVEL
EXTERIOR
I made the map compact and small, since I did not want the player running around and getting frustrated. Focus is on exploration and interaction, but in an effective and logical way. The level is created in such a way that it should always hint the player to where they should go next, without making things too linear.
INTERIOR
The transformation of the interior of the house was fun to work with. I decorated and furnished the house with assets from Quixel Bridge and assets I bought from the Epic Launcher Marketplace. Lighting the interior environment was also a fun challenge, since there were many factors to consider when setting mood. I learnt a lot about how to work with point lights, spotlights and intensities.
Guiding the player
Being subtle was key here and this was a great learning experience for me. Finding the balance between too much assistance and too little was a challenge I had to overcome, but I believe I managed to find a good balance. Environmental elements I used for guiding the player was lighting effects such as the blue fireflies, blood trails and fire.
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The fireflies point the player in the direction of the grave, where the key to the bedroom is buried.
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The blood trail leads the player to the shovel which they need to dig up the key from the grave.
TECHNICAL DESIGN
Setting up the diary
One of the challenges I had to overcome regarding the technical aspect of this project was getting the communication between blueprints to work properly. I had to put some effort into understanding this concept, but really started relying on it further into the project as I started to get acquinted with how object referencing worked.
Screenshot of BP_FirstPersonCharacter
As you can see to the right, the blueprint BP_FirstPersonCharacter handles many of the functions implemented in the game. Therefore, I needed to make sure the communication between this blueprint and other blueprints worked properly.
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Below you can see an example of how I setup the diary system and how the communication is handled between BP_FirstPersonCharacter and BP_Journal.
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Highlighting Objects
I chose a sphere trace to make sure that objects could be outlined in every direction. By taking the forward vector of the player, extending it by a range value and adding the player position, I set the maximum range in which objects should appear outlined.
I made two functions called StartTracing and StopTracing. When an object is within range of the sphere, the function StartTracing is called. The StartTracing function holds the logic for outlining the actual object, turning on a new implemented Render Custom Depth, giving objects a white outline in order to make them more visible for interaction.
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(click on picture to enlarge)