Samantha No More

Game genre: First person puzzle solving. Narrative. Horror elements.

Gameplay summary: You and your partner are searching for your lost friend Samantha. Explore your surroundings, identify puzzles using dialogue interaction, solve those puzzles as a tandem team to advance to the next area to continue your search. With a crazy story to uncover as well.

Platform: Windows PC.​

Engine: Unity.

Time spent on project: Aug - Nov 2021 (12 weeks)

My job role(s): All. I developed this game solo.

Software used: Unity. MAYA. Photoshop. Audacity.

​

Project details:

Samantha No More was a project I chose for Client Production, where we choose an existing client brief and create the game based on their restrictions and specifications, with regular mock client meetings to discuss progress and make changes if needed.

​

By the end I got all 4 "Episodes" in that I had planned, and all the code and puzzles worked start to finish. I would have liked to polish it a bit more before it was due, but I'm still proud of how much I accomplished in a short time.

​

I had planned much more audio / SFX additions to really lift up the atmosphere. I wanted to replace the stand in hands, walkie talkie and torch models and other 3D models, improve the texturing, and much more, oh well, I'll continue on this one in my free time when I can.

It was definitely an ambitious project, reminded me to be careful with scope and time management, but I'm proud of the amount of content I squeezed in for a game made in around 3 months. 😄

​

My contributions to this project:

• Game design.
  - I designed everything in the game, I just had to follow the client brief restrictions of making it an atmospheric first person game about 2 school teens looking for their missing friend, filling in everything else was up to me.
  - As it was about 2 characters, I designed a swap mechanic so you never actually have to see each other (thus saving me needing to create or rig any models), and you swap control at specific dialogue points to share solving one puzzle back & forth.
  - I designed the game to be dialogue centric to give story exposition naturally during gameplay. No intro walls of text to read!
  - I decided to split the game into "episodes", to give the player bite sized bits of gameplay in a variety of areas.
  - I also designed it to be as weird, bizarre and creepy as possible, to hopefully always make the player want to keep exploring to find the next whacky thing!
  - Designing the 3 minigames (which are security checks in the game) was difficult. I had to think up a way for 2 characters you control to play a game at the same time using just one keyboard. I felt just one was too easy, so I made 3, key tapping, holding, coordination etc, a fun challenging result IMO.
   

• Art.
  - I created all the 3D assets you see in this game.
  - Made and animated the trapdoor monster in level 2, based on a trapdoor spider.
  - Volumetric lighting and fog in HDRP. Performance expensive but adds so much atmosphere!
  - Made insect particle FX for streetlights, never done that before.
  - Also started to explore a unique art style in this game, you'll see the best examples in the forest level, and concrete tunnels, showing a more vector style texture on the ground and trees, concrete etc. Sadly I didn't get to push this to all areas.
   

• Programming.
  - I built a dialogue system from scratch, with many features built into it, such as animated text for emotional emphasis, text speed, colour, size and name changing all with simple dropdown options in the inspector.
  - I built a complicated and unique character control swap system, where you need to first trigger the correct dialogue through object or environment interaction, sending you to take control of the other player, and vice versa as you solve puzzle segments. 
  - Also used a few special triggers where the players camera is taken control of for small cutscenes.. not as easy as it looks!
  - I made a keypad combination lock, something I always wanted to accomplish in programming. With individual keys to press, and live text updated as you press each key, then a confirm or deny code check with sfx etc. Much trickier than I thought it would be! but fun.
  - Made a fast travel tunnel tram which I made into a duplicatable prefab to put in every tunnel and rotate when needed.
  - Programming the 3 minigames was one of the harder things to accomplish, because it had to also take into account 2 characters playing their own game simultaneously, and passing or failing their game independently. Using endless key checks, lerping animations, object material changes, sfx.. and so on, I'm proud of pulling that off!
  - Made a proper ladder script, which also limits the players POV when climbing too.
   

• Audio.
  - I sourced, modified or created the SFX for this project.
  - Added the SFX and ambient background audio.

​

Highlights from this project:
 

• My first proper dialogue system, build from scratch after attempts to use existing systems were just too buggy or not capable of doing what I required. So I made my own.

• First time I used HDRP, to take advantage of Volumetric lighting and fog.

• First keypad combination lock I ever made.