Trial Shift (#1) | FMP Concept and Vision

This is the first in series of posts which will document my progress regarding my Final Major Project (FMP) for uni. Across this year (2023-24), I will proceed through the development stages in making my own game. In this post, I will briefly cover my game idea, my inspirations and the core design pillars I plan to build on.

Game

My game will be called Trial Shift and it will be first-person horror with light humour. Visually, I want to draw inspiration from games like Outlast and environments like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Example of a corridor in Outlast

Outlast is an example of a first-person horror which conveys an oppressive, sometimes disturbing, and confined atmosphere quite well. The player is in a constant state of powerlessness, forcing them to sneak and pay close attention to their surroundings. This is fundamental to what I want my game to feel like.

Storage room in BK-2

The Chernobyl disaster is an example of a real accident which left visible scars across the now abandoned city. Recent images illustrate how once-lively offices and workstations now stand unmanned and in disarray. I hope to use some of these images to create a more convincing level for players to navigate.

My focus is on creating an immersive and entertaining short experience and modelling hard surface environments. This plays to my existing strengths with regards to modelling and will help me to get comfortable making more game-ready assets. Striking a balance between artistic liberty and accuracy is what I believe will take most of my time to get right.

Scope

Trial Shift will take place over the course of a single workday. The player will assume a jantorial role in a cleanup crew. They will be greeted at a facility and then be sent down with little-to-no training. There will be three floors (Ground, Maintenance, ???) all with varying access requirements (e.g. key, blocked route). The player will overcome some obstacles, clean rooms and do other basic tasks. The entire game should take about 10 minutes to complete.

My hope is to create a simple, fun experience and by choosing horror I can use it as an excuse to practise making environmental art, paying close attention to composition and atmosphere. In past projects, I have struggled to sucessfully convey a mood, but I plan to iterate on a location, getting feedback and improving it with time.

I expect to scale some of this back later in the year, but consider these the stretch goals for this project.

Moodboard

This moodboard I made with Pureref covers the rough themes and references I will pull from when designing props and the greater level itself. A particular focus has been given to industrial-themed settings and props as it fits the facility setting of my game. The maintenace tunnels are some of my favourite images due to the tight, claustrophobic feeling given. Many environments and props are hard surface in nature, which works to my strength as I do not have much experience with sculpting organic subjects.

Plenty of dust, rust and degradation can be seen in the images here. I plan for most of my assets to be in a similar run-down state in order to keep some consistency with my textures. This will be covered more thoroughly in my design doc.

Design Pillars

The three design pillars are:

• Exploration

• Humour

• Horror

Exploration will involve focus on narrow spaces, lighting and mood. This will go hand in hand with my horror setting which I will cover below. Pacing and variety of obstacles/interactables will be my primary way of pushing the player forward. The level layout should be kept somewhat simple to avoid players getting lost and losing interest.

Humour is a small, personal addition that I am adamant on, despite seemingly clashing with a theme like horror. It is something that I rely on to motivate me creatively and I will take it as a challenge to make it fit in this game. Examples of light humour would mostly surface in lines of dialogue (which I would hopefully get people to voice) and animated NPCs. To address concerns of contrasting themes or overscope, these events will be very minimal, perhaps only occuring once or twice in the entire game.

Horror is arguably the most important of the three pillars here. I want to think of it in two main areas: visuals and audio. For visuals, I'm considering things such as VFX (smoke particle systems + sparks) god rays, etc. I am familiar with particle systems in Unity and researching how to achieve certain visual effects is very achievable. For audio: foley, water drips, footsteps, echoes, creaks, ambience, voiced characters, etc.

This is what I want to make the biggest impression on the player and since it will be visible and audible throughout, there is a lot of potential here. My main concern is going overboard with the addition of visual noise and annoying levels of ambience, so iteration and feedback will be key.

What's Next?

Research

The Elements and Principles of Three-Dimensional Design

I will spend some time studying fundamental art principles such as composition (rule of odds/balance, contrast, emphasis, etc.) and lighting/shadow in the hopes of having a stronger and more compelling vision when making small test environments in the future. Applying some of these principles may aid me in improving my level design.

Design doc

I plan to submit my design doc in the first week of January. It will be a much more comphrensive and (hopefully) well-thought out version of the ideas I have briefly discussed here. Once finished, it will serve as my reference for the rest of the project, although I don't mind straying slightly. This will be my main focus for the rest of December.

Jira backlog

A backlog of project tasks will need to be created on Jira. They will be sorted by priority and I will make the effort to keep it updated throughout the development period. During the later stages of development, Jira will become indispensable as I struggle to keep track of multiple issues. I will try to find time for it around the submission of my design doc.