The Devil is in the Details

GitHub

Type

Position

Date

Course project

Lead programmer

Gameplay & level Designer

November 2017 -

January 2018

Artificial Intellgence

C++

Unreal Engine 4

Blueprint

Level design

Game Design

Puzzle Game

Horror Game

Maya

3D Modelling

The Devil is in the details is a first person horror-puzzle game inspired by some childhood nightmares of the team that developed it. In the game, we play as a child trapped in a nightmarish maze that has to solve the challenges in it to scape. However, this task will be harder than it seems, as we will be constantly chased by the Bill the Ash Man, a man eater ghoul that lives in the maze and doesn’t like intruders. The Maze is full of secrets, and in order to distinguish what’s real from what’s not, you will have to use the magic glasses. With them, you will be able to solve all the riddles in the maze and wake up before Bill catches you.

This project was the first full game that I developed and it was part of the MA in Computer Games Art & Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. It was a 5 weeks project and it was developed by a team of 4 artists and 2 programmers. As it was a project for both the programming and 3D modelling courses, every team member had to participate both in the programming and the art. However, as it's natural, depending on our background and interest, each team member focused more in one field or another.

Due to my background in programming and AI I was chosen to be the lead programmer and I contributed to the project programming different features as the AI of the monster. The idea when we designed it was to make the player feel chased and in danger all the time, with no time to rest or to feel safe. The Tar Man tries to make the player feel in this kind of terrifying nightmares where a monster is chasing you and there is no way to escape from him, because sooner or later he will be right behind your back. I programmed the Tar Man to have different behaviours depending on its proximity to the player.

Other gameplay mechanics that I was in charge of are, for example, the "magic" vision mode, the health and damage system and the system to intereact with objects, among others. Being in charge of programming all these features allowed me to become familiar with Unreal Engine 4, its different features and programming in Blueprint.

As I am also highly interested in game and level design, for this project I was also in charge of the general design of the maze, of different gameplay mechanics and finally, I designed one of the puzzles of the level, The Pumpkin maze.

The idea for the design of the maze was that it had a central room with a big element that could be seen from every location of the maze as a reference, in this case, the house. Appart from the main room, the maze also has a “room” or zone for every puzzles, each of them in a different cardinal point and separated from the others. The design of each of these “rooms” was made by the designer the puzzle inside. Finally, as it is a maze, it also includes a set of corridors that are well connected and are similar to each other to disorientate the player.

As at first it was quite difficult to find the puzzles and orient yourself in it unless you are in the central room, we included a 3D wired figure on the top of each of the puzzle rooms that can only be seen with the magic vision and that allows the player to have a general idea of where the puzzles are.

As final part of my level designer role task, I programmed and designed the pumpkins puzzle. The puzzle I designed, the pumpkin maze, is based in a combination mechanics. The idea is that there are 4 types of doors, and everytime you open a door, you open all the doors of that type but you also close all the doors of the opposite type. Without the magic vision all the doors look the same, but with it, every door has a different type of face that differentiates it from the other ones.

Around the puzzle, if you are using the magic vision, you can see different pumpkins that have different faces just like the doors. If you bring the pumpkins to the doors with its same face, the doors of that type will open. This creates a maze that makes you look for the different pumpkins in order to arrive in the final room where the gnome statue is.

Finally, I also created some of the 3D models that can be seen at the image gallery below, such as the pumpkins, the water well or the fountain. I was also in chager of texturing them.

I think it's also important to mention that, even though this game was made by a small team, the communication was crucial for it. To coordinate everyone and finish the project successfully, someone had to be in charge of this. Even though this role wasn’t decided from the beginning and didn’t directly affect the game, due to the group dynamics and my role as game designer, I ended up also working as project manager along Pablo Bueno Melchor. In this position I was in charge of coordinating everyone, dividing tasks, setting up deadlines, checking that everyone met them and, inside the game, I also had to make sure that all the different features that each of us programmed worked well together.

A more detailed document about my contributions to the game and how did I do the programming can be found here.

The Devil is in the Details is the first game that I worked on and during this process I was able improve my programming skills, learn about Unreal, game and level design and most importantly, about teamwork and the whole and amazing process that is developing a videogame.