Kimball Brooksby - Game Designer

Summary

For this haunted corn maze-inspired maze chase, we had one simple idea, body horror Pac-Man. Core to creating this experience was making the player feel like they were being hunted. To bring this to life, we designed four enemies with unique pathing algorithms, player interactions, and identifying traits, such as proximity effects and sounds. These, combined with dynamic lighting and limited player sight, were integral in ratcheting up the tension and cultivating the feeling of mounting dread that we were looking for.

Details

Team Size | 12

Duration | 2 Days

Platform | Windows (Itch.io)

Role | Lead Engineer

Tools | Unity 2021.1, C#, Git

Dynamic Lighting & Sightline Design

The Problem: Where's the Tension?

To foster the atmosphere we wanted in this game, we needed a central conflict in the gameplay that would create the tension necessary to incite the horror we wanted in our players.

The Process: Giving Pacman a Flashlight

We started from the idea of "horror Pacman", and pretty quickly landed on the conflict of limiting player sight in tension with enemies moving around in the dark and a need to traverse the enemy infested area.

The Solution: Wall the Player In

Taking this, I utilized a plugin to create maze walls that blocked sight from a top-down perspective, and a flashlight that would only illuminate the area in the direction of the player's mouse to create areas that would naturally grab the player's attention by being more brightly lit when navigated.

MaizeLight.mp4

Enemy Behavior Design

The Problem: What's in the Dark?

The other half of the equation for our central conflict was the design of enemies that would behave in such a way as to make our player feel that they were being hunted by things beyond their control.

The Process: Creating the Lurkers

We started with the behavior of the four ghosts from pacman, and added our own twists to them. To facilitate quick implementation of the enemies, each engineer was assigned a monster that they would be in charge of. Mine was dubbed the "Gazer".

The Solution: Lock Eyes with a Stranger

With my monster, I wanted to recreate the paralyzing feeling of coming face to face with a spider in a hallway, so I implemented behavior that would cause the enemy to freeze when the player shone their flashlight on them, with the trade-off that they couldn't be stunned by conventional means. This monster was received very well by both the team and outside players.

MaizeGazer.mp4

Player Abilities Design & VFX

The Problem: What Am I Missing?

During the main production of the game, we worked on things like the visual indicators for shotgun ammo, relic count, and sight line, but we found that much of the game state was unclear, such as when enemies were stunned and where the relics were located that we needed to clarify.

The Process: Creating Non-Verbal Cues

I started with the shotgun, as it was the main complaint of the game jam version and one of the things I had implemented, and took a look at how the game was conveying that the gun was working to the player before working on increasing the discoverability of relics.

The Solution: Pair up Stimuli

For the shotgun, I added a blood spray particle effect to the enemies on hit, which worked with the enemy hit SFX to create a complimentary feedback pair, clarifying exactly if and when an enemy was hit. And to the relics, I added a slight purple glow and a screen vignette, so that the player could see them over walls if they were close enough.

Video Comparison: Old Shotgun VFX (Top) vs. New Shotgun VFX (Bottom)

MaizeVFX_Old.mp4

MaizeParticle.mp4

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