You.Asset - Dev Diary

"You.Asset is a first person, sci-fi horror game where you play as a mannequin trying to escape 'Asset Hell' -- an area outside of the game where all of the deleted assets are sent."

This was the concept statement I scribbled down in my Game Design Document when coming up with a handful of ideas to pitch my team. In an act of creativity, or maybe better categorized as scrappiness, I knew going into Panic Studio's Summer Horror Game Jam that we did not have an artist. So, I proposed the setting for our story to be in the Unreal Editor (UE) itself since we could use the UE default mannequins as characters (enemies or NPCs) and it would fit within the lore of the world we crafted. A story around being discarded and used as an asset - an allegory to being discarded in any shape or form in real life - sounded like it could fit... so we ran with it!

Setting Up the Story

We wanted the story to be simple, so I decided to limit the game to three sections:

1. The Junkyard (a.k.a. the "Asset Hell") -- Reminiscent of the outdoor areas of a Resident Evil mansion, mixed with a short stealth section inspired by Still Wakes the Deep's stealth mechanics. We wanted to take the time to slowly introduce the players to the world and story through short letters written by the wife of the Creator.

2. The Mansion -- This level was inspired by Alan Wake 2's Nightsprings Expansion, and contained a bulk of the puzzle solving. With The Mansion level, I really saw it as an opportunity to try re-creating a cool puzzle from Nightsprings, with our own twist. I wanted to increase the tension in the story through visual cues and notes left by the wife of the Creator to lead to the finale.

3. The Editor -- Sometimes you get a silly idea and just run with it. I thought it would be an interesting idea to transport the player to the Unreal Editor to literally exit the game. This is complete with a whole chase sequence with a mouse cursor and just felt like a good way to close out this mini adventure.

Now that you get the inspirations and ideas of all three levels, I'm going to talk about key aspects of each.

The Junkyard

When working on the first level, I sketched a quick map to plan out the key story beats.

First Level - Draft

The Junkyard is a short stealth section in the game. I wanted to keep a few things in mind when designing this area.

1. Make the golden path clearly marked.

2. Allow for multiple paths through the maze.

3. Provide clear safe zones for the player to hide in.

4. Provide alternative safe zones that are to be used as a last ditch resort.

5. Add triggerable sounds that alert the enemy, to keep tension high throughout the maze.

To help make the golden path clear, I added lights to literally help light the path, but also used less foliage in the areas that would have been treaded on more frequently. I also made sure to include multiple instances of the safe zones directly on the golden path so the player would be aware of them, and could use them to their advantage once the enemy spawned.

I wanted to keep options open for the players, so I created lockers inspired by Amnesia and plenty of other horror games that the player could hide in. Additionally, I updated the enemy AI to pull the player out of the lockers if they were not out of line of sight when they entered the locker.

Final Junkyard Map

The Mansion

Objectives for this level:

• Act as the main puzzle section of the game.

• Provide backstory through visual storytelling and notes.

• Ramp up the horror and provide a memorable transition moment to the last level.

Inspiration:

This level was primarily inspired by the third episode of the Alan Wake 2 Expansion, Night Springs. In the second level of the episode, Tim Breaker, the protagonist, is transported to the Oceanview Hotel lobby where each door leads to the same lobby but at a different time. The solution to the puzzle is to walk through doors in order of the time indicated on the wall behind the reception desk and above each door. I was really impressed by how the puzzle connected to the elements of time travel in the story and how the solution was communicated to the player via environmental clues.

I modified this level for my own game by creating a unique room for each section, instead of a repeating lobby with different details. I wanted this level to feel like a maze of rooms in a house, where each room told a different piece of the overarching story. To accommodate this change, I made the puzzle a little easier by just requiring the player to visit each room once to unlock the door to the exit of the level in the attic.

First Iteration:

Initially, I wanted this puzzle to be an Art Gallery that showed the different stages of the game art, from sketches to concept to final product. The solution would be going in order from earliest to latest room. Who would have thought it was hard to make art assets without an artist! Cool idea that was the foundation for the actual puzzle.

Level 2 - Draft

Each room was intended to tell a piece of the story and have some small form of interaction to reinforce the story through gameplay. I created separate level instances and a trigger that handled loading and unloading of level instances once you overlap with it. The trigger was instance editable to make setting up which door goes where easy in editor. After the event needed to complete each room was completed, I had the a bool in the game instance flip to true for these events to track if the door to the attic should be open or not. This was also used to make sure jumpscares were not triggered each time the player walks through the different rooms as I thought that would negatively impact the player experience.

So, speaking of jumpscares... spoiler alert! I designed the jumpscares to foreshadow the final boss, a pair of eyes that have been watching you during the entirety of the game.

The Editor

While the other levels were a bit mroe spooky or serious, when I planned this level I just wanted to have as much fun as possible making something a little silly, but still satisfying. And for my final level, my objective was to simply:

• End the game with a captivating and thematic set piece!

Level 3 - Draft

We had a few ideas for the end of the game, but the one that stuck was creating a physical representation of the Unreal Editor and literally exiting out of it. We tease the boss on the lead-up to the last level through a quick jumpscare (as mentioned earlier) and here you get to actually confront it!

Level 3 - In Editor

When the player first arrives here, they start on the far end in the content drawer and need to head over to "The Exit" to escape the game! There's a few hallways to introduce"The Cursor" as a creepy enemy, but it does not actually interact with you quite yet... because you can't click things that you can't see.

A Cursor Sliding Through the Halls

You approach the "Enter Console Command" box and suddenly the Creator's eyes appear. Now the cursor can grab ya IF you're in line of sight of the eyes, good thing we have some handy dandy text to block their vision.

Astigmatism At Its Finest

The player now has to run up a bunch of stairs to escape, complete with a series of rooms that close as they approach (also another great way to incorporate more jokes)! Let's make like this chase scene and speed run each of the rooms:

• Color Picker: made sure to add tons of different colored lights, spinnin' around.

• Materials: a whirlwind of different materials I used throughout the game. Yeehaw!

• Details: "Select an object to view details." -- possibly the most detailed room I've made. (see below)

• Item Label: A very well organized item label tree for your viewing pleasure.

Behold the Details

And finally "The Exit" and one last lil' joke, your character shrinks as you enter the "Minimize" room and returns to normal size in the "Windows Restore" room. Talk about some environmental storytelling amiright?

And finally "The Exit" + one last lil joke, your character shrinks as you enter the "Minimize" room and returns to normal size in the "Windows Restore" room. Talk about some environmental storytelling amiright?

"The Exit"

And that's it!

With all of these unique levels and challenges, I gained a lot of experience making this game. I'll take some time to post-mort the project, but for now I consider it a success. For starters, I was able to communicate my vision for the final product and rally a team behind it. Additionally, my programming and design chops improved. My main goals going into this jam were to progress in those skillsets plus recreate mechanics and design concepts from games I admire.

I think I succeeded at both... why not check it out and let me know what you think in the itch.io comments?

My Contributions to You.Asset

• Designed every level.

• Programmed everything following Entity-Component-System best practices -- character controller, enemy AI, all custom event triggers. Made blueprints as editor friendly as possible so I could easily repurpose them and iterate quickly.

• Maintained all Game Design Documentation.

• Structured and lead bi-weekly sprints.

Communicated the vision of each level and section to the sound designer and writer for story cohesion and to ensure we were all aligned on the vision of the game.

Huge kudos to both my writer/partner and sound designer for really tying the game together with their work. One of the most rewarding things in game dev is spending hours in a level you've blocked out in silence, then suddenly being able to immerse yourself in the story while the ambient sounds play in the background.