Final Year Project 1 & 2
Escape From Varroa
Escape From Varroa was my Final Year Project (FYP), which I worked on as a designer for 2 semesters. My role was to design the level layout, core gameplay mechanics, audio design and certain parts of the narrative design.
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Level Design
The level layout consists of 4 Main domes, and 1 central hub which connects them. The overall layout was heavily inspired by the Biosphere, located in Arizona and Rapture from the Bioshock series. As a team we thought this was suitable as our game also takes place in an underwater facility. One of the challenges we faced during development was guiding the player in the right direction using minimal UI. We believed we solved the issue by tweaking the level layout without directing the players on what to do using UI. The levels were drawn on paper, which I then implemented into Unity using probuilder (plugin).
Core Gameplay & Mechanics
Our game is not only just about exploration. There's combat & puzzles too. The core gameplay consists of players exploring the facility while looking for items, solving puzzles and eliminating threats & obstacles in their way. Some of those were swarm enemies, boss enemies and other challenges.
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Audio Design
Audio design plays a crucial role in building the game atmosphere, especially for a game from the horror genre. Some of the audio files were recorded by the team members, including myself while the other SFXs were downloaded from audio libraries with permission. I used ProTools 12 and Audacity to edit and mix the audios to fit the game.
Narrative Design
The premise of the game is as follows:
The player plays as a captive that needs to escape this facility where an outbreak has occurred. The player needs to explore the facility in order to figure out where they actually are and find a way to get out of this place.
The overall concept and narrative were based on retro
sci-fi films and some of the findings I received during a research about parasites.
