The Depths

Please note: This project was made by a team of 3 game designers, 1 programmer, and 1 concept artist. As such, we did not create most of the meshes or materials in this project - most of them are from Quixel's Megascan library, but please see the bottom of the project page for a complete list.

Design Pillars:

1. Light system. The player is safe as long as they are in the light. The lantern has refillable cartridges which the player can collect. They last 50 seconds each. Once the light goes out the player must refill the lantern or find a light source within 10 seconds or they will die. (The exact numbers are never communicated to the player, the uncertainty of the timings make things more tense).

2. Let the player's imagination do the work. We don't ever want to fully show the monster to the player. This is because people have powerful imaginations that can fill in with their own fears and because we don't have an animator or artist on the team so we're limited in what we can show.

3. Make players do the things they fear the most. In a game where the light and it's fuel is safety, asking players to leave the light and venture into areas where they don't know if their fuel will last is terrifying.

4. Reconnaissance by death. Players will have to build a mental map of the depths to succeed. They'll need to experiment with learning level layouts and how to prioritize their fuel. As such, they will experience each level multiple times. To this end, we need to build systems that create tension and we need to not be overly reliant on jump scares and long cutscenes.

Concepting:

We built a 2D map of our level and laid out the key moments. The map was made in Inkarnate and we annotated it with Miro.

Player flow chart. 

Concept Art.

Level Design Process:

We split the cave into a section for each designer. The focus here was to capture the lonely feeling of being stuck in a cave with something unknown. We tried a variety of materials for the cave, and then we started modeling the walls and setting anchor points in our environment. 

Original blockout for the miner's mess hall (left side of level).

Final layout for the miner's mess hall.

A. Redesigning the Balance Plate Puzzle: The pressure plates were originally located equidistant from the door, meaning placing 1 object on the left plate and 2 objects on the right plate would solve the puzzle, however this felt a bit gamey and uninteresting. We discovered there was an opportunity to increase the depth of the puzzle and develop the theme from the previous puzzle by placing one plate closer to the door and the other further from the door. This way, placing your lantern on the plate closest to the door provides you with light inside the reward chamber and plenty of time to loot it, but if you place your lantern on the farther plate, the reward chamber will be too dark to see and you won't have enough time to loot and retrieve your lantern before the monster attacks. Due to the redesign, the collapsing tunnel with gold inside was scrapped, as it didn't fit the mechanics here, but could be used in a later level.

Reward chamber with lantern placed on the far pressure plate. (Good luck finding your loot!)

Reward chamber with the lantern placed on the near pressure plate. (There's that pesky gear!)

B. Redesigning the chasm crossing: We added an open area and verticality change to the chasm crossing because the player has been going through a lot of extremely claustrophobic spaces for a few minutes now, and they just experienced one of the most intense moments of the level, so I wanted to give them a brief reprieve through a more open space.

C. Redesigning the shed encounter: When players approach the shed, their light goes out and they must make a split-second decision to duck into the shed and shelter from the monster. In the original design, this decision happened at an intersection, which was a bad idea. As you can see, 2 of the 3 choices resulted in the player dying and the player doesn't have enough time or information to make a reasonably informed decision about which way to go, resulting in their death feeling arbitrary and unfair.

To alleviate this, I moved the shed encounter to its own hallway, so sheltering in the shed is by far the most logical option.

However, when exiting the shed, I use a reverse-reveal technique to show the player that there was another path.

Which leads them to this spooky encounter with the monster, whom is standing in a spot the player was in just a few moments ago!

Designing the set piece: A key point in this level is a panoramic viewpoint over an abandoned mining village. The viewpoint acts as a hub for the level as the main quest is located here: a gear puzzle that players must complete to repair the elevator and descend into the abandoned mining village. Making the vista point memorable is essential as it performs a number of important gameplay functions: it acts as a critical landmark for the level's main quest, as a motivator for the player to progress (If I repair the elevator, I get to do down there!), and the elevator ride is the scene of the level's big plot twist & finale.

Set piece blockout progression. The buildings were whiteboxed with SuperGrid and then kit bashed with wooden beams from Quixel Bridge's Megascans.

The design of the gear puzzle communicates its quest objective without any text. There are 2 missing gears. Find them, insert them, and then all 5 gears will spin. This is reinforced by the voiceline that plays when the player attempts to activate the elevator.

Once the player solves the gear puzzle to repair the elevator, they ride the elevator down into the level's finale, where they learn that the one monster they've struggled so hard to escape from has a lot of friends. It's a dramatic turn of events, where we've twisted a moment of relief into one of terror & despair.

The gear puzzle and balance plates are scripted in Blueprints.

The elevator ride & associated action are scripted with sequencer.

Designing player death: One obstacle we came across was triggering the death animation for the player. We attached the monster mesh to the player character at all times and made it not visible. Once the light goes out, we make the monster visible then play its attack animation to trigger the death screen. 

Jumpscare Implementation:

We utilized the Fracture mode to break the Skeleton Mesh and allow a trigger box to blow it up.

However, breaking a mesh isn't enough, so sound had to play a part. One sound was not sufficient so I was able to get a bit more creative, using multiple sounds as shown in the video. 

Music and Sound Design: Utilizing Maschine Studio, I created the main music of the game that sets an eerie tone throughout. From there, I was able to obtain stock sounds that are included in the Maschine pack for overall environments. I created, mixed, and programmed sounds of the game. 

Credits:

Level & System Designers - AJ Anderson, Jason Phillips, Tristan Sierra.

Sound Designer - Jason Phillips

Programmer - Charlie Duffet

Concept Artist & Menu Design - Sami Berger

Third Party Assets Used:

Meshes & materials from Quixel Bridge's Megascans collection.

Character arm from Primitive Characters (Pack) by Bugrimov Maksim from Unreal Marketplace.

Demon Dog models and animations by Protofactor Inc from Unreal Marketplace.

Crystal models from Scale X's Stylized Modular Crystal Mine from Unreal Marketplace.

Movement systems from LongmireLocomotion's Advanced Locomotion System V4 from Unreal Marketplace.

Blockout tools from ZeOrb's SuperGrid Starter Pack from Unreal Marketplace.

Sound effects for the monster when the light goes out and when it's attacking the shed door from Demon Vocalizations by Magic Sound Effects from Unreal Marketplace.

Oil Lamp model: "Oil Lamp" (https://skfb.ly/oIrJA) by MatiasMyma is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution