NIGHT SHIFT

ROLE

Lead Designer

Project Lead

DESCRIPTION

Stay late to finish all your work before the weekend in the office as fast as you can. Tasks wait for you on several floors, get through all of them in order to head home for the night. No one else is in the building. Only you.

BEST Thing

During this month I got to do anything I wanted with a respectable and tight scope. This let me run with a basic idea and box it in quickly without it getting out of control or wanting to implement feature after feature. Just being a simple level demo at its core I still got to work on a lot that interested me, namely a introduction cinematic. Laying the barebones of some story lets me get the immersion started easily. Along with having a persistent environment to create ambience was something I could go full in on. Hearing the rainstorm hit the windows of the office while working, the little clicks of your feet and the pleasant vibes of the elevator music put together a tidy environment.

WORST Thing

Scope is wonderful because without it a project isn't a project it's just a pipe dream. Restrictions on a project are needed, but restrictions on progress can be a little overkill. This month had us locked from making any progress until it was TIME to make progress. This was quite difficult as everyone works at a different pace so it created problems within the class.

Project Description

Night Shift was a month long project broken up in several different stages for developing. A roadblock at first as we had to have full planning done before block meshing or laying anything out in engine. While not a challenge, even with planning finished we had to wait for the week to finish to enter the next stage. This lead to some confusion with the way the project had been laid out for us but was only a small setback. We were meant to design a single level with an end with clear objectives to complete in order to "win"; basically level end. At the core of it, everyone needed to have almost the exact same style of interactions and objectives so everyone's project had to be scoped down to simple 1 button interactions but there are many ways to create dynamic gameplay.

Little bit more description

I decided on creating a level with some atmosphere and immersion aiming for an "experience" that felt like a thriller. Putting the player in the role of an office worker who's working overtime at night pushed me in the direction of creating a silent paranoia. While the players completing their tasks there's a tall and thin entity that will spawn in random locations and begin to drain a sanity meter. When the meter depletes that triggers a game over, but this can be avoided by immediately breaking line of sight and taking "sanity pills" to restore sanity. Using the stairwell and elevators to reach tasks on other floors the entity can spawn anywhere on your current floor. Finishing all tasks opened the garage door and let you go home for the night.