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Eugene Tam
Game Developer
House of Ignotus - Question Reality
House of Ignotus was my Final Year Project, last long term game project as a student game developer. I am able to hand pick and gather a team of 10 developers (1 designer, 1 public relation manager, 3 artist and 5 programmer) based on my previous experience working with almost all of my course mates. The recruitment process lasted for around a month where I would have conversation and discussion with potential developers to identify their goals and vision, it is very important for the team to share similar passion and target to ensure that we will work on the intensity and pace required to complete the game.
An easter egg we planted in our game
After the base team was formed, all members were given the chance to pitch their game ideas on an in-house pitching session. Besides deciding what genre of game do we want to develop, the team also sat down and drafted the rules required to ensure the team would work smoothly and disciplined together. A horror action game set in a mysterious forest during World War II - Exilium was chosen by majority of the team members and we decided that Unreal Engine 4 would be the best choice to develop the game on. The tech team was immediately tasked to research on the engine and compile a manual documentation on the source control while the art team focus on finding references and preparing concept arts.
The pitch session with all the lecturers
Since I am not the one who came up with the idea, I spend few weeks reiterating and solidifying the game concept to make sure it fits the team's vision and provide the team with sufficient challenge that can boost their portfolio. After the official pitch session, the team evaluate all the lecturer's advice and decide on 2 major changes which reshape the game - using an indoor setting instead of an organic outdoor and changing the genre from survival horror to psychological horror.
The main inspiration and references
After the new idea was accepted, the team move on to the pre-production phase where all of focus on are identify the target market, nail down the intended player experience and set up the design pillars which will be the anchor point for the game design. Our main adviser lecturer pointed out that developing a psychological horror game required a very high level of thinking process and the best way to come out with those ideas is to experience 'Fear and Horror' ourselves. I took the advice and start diving deep into the genre by exploring all the creative media such as game, Youtube videos, film, short stories and comics, the team will then have sharing sessions where we present our findings after dissecting those mediums.
We breakdown games mainly based on their gameplay and aesthetic, we enjoy the process
of sitting down together to assess them and think of ways to improve and better implement them. Out of all the horror games that we analyse, we manage to narrow them down and pin point the elements that we like to utilised and try out. After going through the non game horror material such as H.P Lovecraft's Call of Cthulu, Junji Ito's comic series and 1997 film Event Horizon, we like the idea of making our antagonist an entity so powerful and ominous, it is beyond human comprehension and expectation. With this, I am able to decide on making 'Horror of Unknown' as the game's main theme and 'Against the Norm' as our player experience.
Audio
Setting
Design
Entity
Narrative
Mechanic
The 5 crucial component in my design
There are an abundance of design decision that I made for the game but I would like to catergorised them into 5 important elements that affect the game most. They all play equally vital role in shaping and defining the game, disregarding either one of them will bring dire consequences to the game.
Space
Priority
Audio
Scares
Narrative
I will be explaining the game design in detail now, so I would strongly suggest you to try out the game first before reading this blog to prevent spoiler. As show above, the audio design of the game can be further separate into 4 key points - Space, Scares, Priority and Narrative. I have constant conversation with my audio programmer to explore new technology such as FMOD, Ambisonic audio and Resonance audio that could improve our game's sound system and overall experience.
Space
In order to make the mansion which is a big part of the game feel real and immersive, we develop a spacial sound system where echoes behave differently depending on the room's space. This minor detail actually received praises from player as they mention it help them feel like they physically in the mansion as the sound highlight the size contrast.
Scares
Since the entity doesn't appear until player solve the first room, I design an audio scare system where audio clip will be play when player entered certain area of the mansion. These places include dark corners, long corridors and 'safe spaces', we believe that impact of these sound effect can only be fully felt when player least expect them. Besides, we also experiment on having timely silence as one of our tool to strike fear into player which turn out to be better than we expected in truth.
Priority
We develop a priority list soon after we realise there are situation where multiple sound would be playing at the same time. The intention is to make sure certain sound will be louder that the other so that player can listen to the most relevant sound at all the situation.
Narrative
There are two main story that I want to tell the player - what happened and what is happening, I choose to play different sound effect when player do specific action in the game to tease the incident that happened there before. We also set a challenge to minimising the on-screen UI to increase immersion hence background music in the game serve as the sanity bar of the game, the music will be increasingly intense while the sound effect will be more distorted when their sanity decreases.
Aesthetic
Mechanic
Setting (Location)
Scares
Narrative
This video breakdown the phenomenon from a social culture perspective
Part of the video explained how to
utilised size contrast
As mentioned above, our game did make a big change for the location mainly because the artist think that interior structure and props are a good platform to showcase their 3D modeling skill. There were plenty of discussion on what sort of establishment we should go for, original choices includes hotel, mall and movie theater which are less common for a horror game. In the end, we settle for a Victorian mansion which are widely associated with the genre as the size are more manageable and there will be less place that look the same.
Aesthetic
I took the research on the mansion's interior design seriously as I want to create an accurate Victorian mansion that can be identify and recognize with just a brief glance. I manage to recreate a close reassemble of an authentic Victorian mansion by studying interior design books and actual mansion's floor plans found in old library achieve and internet online tour. The lighting was another element that I spent a long time on as I need to reach a balance where it is logical but also be able to bring out the creepy feeling and be dark enough to encourage player to use the items.
Mechanic
Speaking of items, the layout of the mansion in our game also reflects my intention and expectation of player's action when they are in it. As an example, there are usually 2 exits for smaller room to ensure that player will have an alternate escape route if they are nearby the entity. Besides, there will be a void room near any dead end of the mansion to provide the player with a way to avoid the monster if use properly.
Narrative
I follow the advice of one of my mentor which stated - 'Design and decorate like you are the owner, not the game designer'. Obviously, I couldn't follow it fully as I still need to take care of the gameplay element but I do make sure that the decoration in the mansion present the idea that someone with the backstory actually live there recently. Details such as the owner is right handed hence all the object's handle face the same direction or having a particular beverage choice in specific rooms are my way of telling the player the character's personality and past.
Scares
Similar to the goal of the audio's scares, all the spaces and objects in the mansion are designed with a certain intention behind. The paintings and sculptures are positioned so that when player open a door or make a sharp turn, those scary props will be the first thing to welcome them. The ground floor are wider but filled with rooms that player can use for stealth and hiding while first floor has long corridors and junctions which allow chase sequence to flourish.
Mechanic
Entity
Narrative
I decide to group mechanic, entity and narrative the last 3 component together as they affect and work with each other tightly.
Entity X Mechanic
I design the entity to only be able to sense through heat and sound which create this gameplay tension as the items that player can used to detect the objects will emit those energy. We want to put player into situation where they will be contemplating do they want to take the risk of being detected in order to progress faster.
Entity X Narrative
The main character - Johnny, is a bright physicist that rely on logical thinking and thrive on rationalising every situation he faced where else the entity is a creature that sole purpose is to twist and reverse the norm of our universe into it's own form. These create this interesting philosophical conflict and dynamic relationship to attract them to compete against each other.
Mechanic
There are 3 out of all the mechanic that I would like to highlight - Inventory, Door and Randomiser.
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As mentioned previously, having minimum UI was one of our goal especially those that required player to navigate into another scene. With this, I decided to make the two hand as the player's main inventory and they will need to think carefully and strategise based on it. Player can choose to use both hand to pick up objects which they can return and progress faster but lost the ability to open doors and use item.
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I designed a power controlled door which will emit noise based on how fast player open the door, this subvert player's expectation of how a normal door would work in a horror game and create a sense of panic when the entity detect them.
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In order to solve the problem of most horror game being an one time experience, we designed a void room and prop spawn randomiser to allow player to have a different experience every time they play the game hence increasing the replayability of the game.
Monster
We design the outlook of the monster to have no eyes and with long limbs as it is what we imagine a creature that rely on feeling of temperature and vibration to looks like, it would constantly stretches out it's lengthy limb to reach and feel it's surrounding
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I think that it will be interesting to level the playing field for both the player and entity by removing their ability to look for each other with their vision. Player will need to continuously pay attention to their surrounding to check whether nearby light sources are flickering or take risk by using music box to detect the entity.
Narrative
Due to time and technical limitation, I am not able to build the storytelling with more common medium such as cut scenes and voiced dialogue, instead I kept all the narrative element as notes in the journal. Most of them also serve as gameplay hint that could help player progress in the game. This content includes important plot point such as what are the character's motive, why happened to the professor recently and tease the possible outcome. I also implement the 'Show, don't tell' technique throughout the game to display certain ideas and Mythos, the most noticeable example would be in the tutorial section where the first two door open at different speed and sound volume.
Pre Production
Production
Post Production
Test and Production Documents
Test Sessions
Tech Documentation
The breakdown of my focus on non designing task during the whole development cycle
Project Lead
My experience and ability to manage project landed me the role as the team's project lead, I was given the authority and trust to plan out the team's schedule and distributing the task. The goal of my task was simple and straightforward, make sure the team complete the game with the intended quality within the time scope given.
Test Adviser
Since the size of the team and scope of the game are quite big, I insist on having a QAQC (Quality Assurance and Control) section to ensure the quality of the game in check and team's workflow are optimum.
Pre Production
I prepare all the production and test documents such as production model, team schedule, milestones scope, test plan and test case early on so that I can brief and discuss with the team whether it's viable and find more alternative to optimised it. All the documents then serve as the central reference for the whole team when there're uncertainty or confusion.
Production
These documents will be update immediately once there are any adjustment made such as rescheduling or rescoping, this prove to be vital as medium sized team like us required proper documentation to keep track of all the decision or changes made. I also introduced some new documents that benefited the team's work progress such as change logs and changes pinboard which records minor changes to the documents and target for short sprint session.
I repeatably emphasize the importance of proper documentation to the team and our quality we strive for our document is to make sure that anyone that have all of our documentation will be able to continue with the project. We constantly improve and reiterate our document based on each other's commend while executing our task following the document prepared. By the end of the production, most of the team member are able to present their personal research finding on how to improve the game and writing comprehensive manual that can be easily follow by all the members.
Post Production
In-house bug test session and public playtest session was carried out from production until the end of post production to ensure that we are always aware of what the team and first timer think about game. All the test session are planned so that it will align with our milestone and intended test subjects, this process is extremely effective and sustainable as we can improve upon certain aspect of the game and immediately check on its impact.
Tiring but tremendous experience with them
There's only that much I can share about the whole project, I would like to take this chance to thanks my fantastic teammates for their consistent dedication to the game and to help me realise the significance of maintain a healthy team morale. If there's any question that you like to ask me, go ahead and contact me at the contact page.
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