Somniphobia
Creative Director | Systems Designer | Narrative Designer
Overview
Academic Project
Roles: Designer (System, Narrative), Creative Director
Genre: Survival Horror, Rogue-Like
Engine: Unreal Engine (5.2)
Platform: PC
Team size: 10 (3 designers, 7 programmers)
Production length: ~8 months (September 2023 - April 2024)
Somniphobia is a survival horror game about a man trapped in a recurring nightmare. He must confront his fears and fight to the heart of the dream and stop it, before he wakes up and must repeat the cycle.
The game blends classic survival horror genre features like fixed camera angles and resource management with rogue like mechanics where Item and enemy spawning, enemy health, certain effects and events, and even the map layout are all partially randomized.
Design goals:
- Make a game that seamlessly blends together the survival horror and rogue-like genres.
- Gain experience working in, and leading, a multidisciplinary team.
- Get experience working with Unreal Engine and it’s Blueprint system.
What I did:
- Established three design pillars to drive production and designed the mechanics/systems including combat, movement, and camera.
- Wrote detailed and programmer friendly design documentation, assisted with implementation using Unreal Blueprints.
- Created narrative themes and plot points to integrate narrative into many aspects of the game.
Process
1. Pre-production
I designed the base systems (mechanics, camera) by demonstrating them on paper and writing detailed design documentation.
I led a discussion to establish our three design pillars to keep focused on producing a cohesive experience.
3. Production
I worked closely with the programmers to design, implement, and tweak the combat system and enemies.
My implementation involved editing Unreal Blueprints to adjust values, adding bullet spread, and adding weighted enemy health randomization.
2. Prototyping
I kept the documents updated, gave feedback to programmers, and edited values in engine.
I created four central narrative themes to ensure the game has a strong narrative core.
Implemented the narrative themes I established into the systems, levels, UI, and more.
4. Polish
I completed multiple tasks including creating two new rooms, partnering with another designer to create two cutscenes, and editing over twenty camera angels.
I also spent time making additional tweaks to game randomization values based on new playtest data.
Lessons Learned
The Importance of Design Pillars
Proposed changes or additions were checked against the pillars and were only added if they fit which proved invaluable in creating a cohesive experience.
Early on I had the idea to add a timed critical hit mechanic which I scrapped after realizing that it went against the second pillar.
The document we printed and hung up.
3 minute video that gives an overview of the combat system and the work I put into it, including some specific examples
Tense and Fair Combat Design
I set the specific combat design goals of making it feel tense and feel fair.
I played into resource management to increase tension by designing a ranged weapon that uses ammo, and a melee weapon that was riskier and uses stamina.
I made combat feel fair by implementing bullet spread, adding weighted enemy health randomization in Blueprints, and careful adjustment of spawn rates.
Designing Rogue-Like Mechanics
I learned about creating meta progression, rogue-like room design, and how to balance item and enemy spawn rates.
I hosted a meeting to discuss issues with whole level randomization, proposing a from of limited generation that still made use of existing work.
The change in how level randomization worked proved to not only be a good lesson in rogue like map design, but also in scope management and teamwork.
A sketch I made to illustrate my “hub and spoke” idea. H=hub area. P=path end rooms. B=boss. Orange=randomly generated layout.
A top-down screen shot of a generated layout.
