Samat Imanalin
Technical game designer
First person horror set in a haunted Japanese castle
General information
Genre:
Development time:
Team size:
Platform:
Primary Role:
Secondary Role:
First person horror
November 2020 - June 2021
23
Unreal Engine 4
Technical design
Audio design
Description
Osakabe is a first person horror loosely based around a Japanese folk legend. The player takes control of a child who, guided by a mysterious spirit, tries to escape the haunted castle. Evade, hide and use the limited artefacts hidden around the decrepit rooms to avoid meeting Osakabe at all costs.
My contribution
Player camera
Purpose
Since Osakabe is a first-person horror, player camera needed to contribute to the horror atmosphere in addition to being the player's main window into the game world.
Approach
After researching similar games I have settled on several ways of fulfilling camera's purpose:
1) Utilizing subtle camera shakes and movements to build a stronger connection between the player and their avatar.
2) Utilizing camera angle with environment and character art to create a feeling of being a small and vulnerable child.
To create the natural camera shakes I started with observing how other people's walk. Since human walking is essentially a series of controlled falls, I decided that the sound of footsteps, which is an important part of the stealth in our game, needed to be handled in the same function as the camera.
To implement this into the game, I decided to update the character's camera position and rotation based on timelines. One for idle and one for walking/running. I also attached the trigger for a footstep sound to coincide with the camera to help the enemy's detection logic.
Early iterations
Here is an example of tuning the camera height and shake intensity. I've made those variables adjustable so that other designers and artists in the team can experiment and settle on the best setup.
Release version
Player abilities
Another way in which I contributed to the project was to prototype, iterate and implement player abilities
Wind up toy
A small throwable toy, that the player can possess to safely explore the world for a limited amount of time.
The smaller size of the toy, allows it to go to go to places that normal character can't reach. Additionally, we experimented with allowing it to lure the enemy(monster) to it's location.
In the end, we cut the possession functionality because it detracted from one of our game pillars. We wanted the player to feel small and vulnerable and the toy allowed the player to be even smaller and explore safely.
We left it as a throwable noisemaker that attracts the monster to it's location.
Lantern
The goal of the lantern is to light up darker parts of the levels at the cost of limited fuel. It allows the players to more easily find the items that open the doors to new levels but also make the player more noticeable to the monster.
Mirror
The mirror can allow the player to escape the monster by stunning it for a short time. However, since we made a point to design every player ability with a flaw there is a catch. Both the player and the monster must be reflected in the mirror at once for it to work. The mirror could be turned by the player.
At one point we decided not to make the player character model, so the mechanic was adjusted by removing the ability to turn the mirror. That way we skip the "seeing the player character" problem and still force the player to turn their back towards the monster. A little basic, but we were short on time at that point in development.
Gameplay prototypes
During the early stages of the project I worked on several gameplay prototypes that were meant to explore ideas and teach us how to work in strike teams. The blind navigation prototype was developed with a technical designer and an environment artist.
The project brief limited us to develop a horror game that takes place on an island castle/fortress. This prototype was meant to investigate interesting ways of navigating the game world, explain the idea to the team and back it up with playtesting.
Approach
With the conditions set, our strike team decided to make make the game character blind and show them perceiving the world through other senses.
My teammates, we developed 2 mechanics:
Fast decaying echolocation
In the meantime, I took charge over making the level. I've created a simple labyrinth with a riddle and a couple of levers that needed to be found.
And smell
I also started with testing to see if the gameplay setup works and implemented a number of changes to the labyrinth to remove points of confusion or frustration.
For example I added unique geometric structures in several rooms to distinguish them from one another and give the player recognizable landmarks to build a mental map around.
