Doorways

First Person Exploration – Fall 2015

Overview

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Dave really liked his work. He sat in an office every day, working at his computer or writing reports. Sometimes, he would have team meetings, or throw nerf balls at the guy a few cubes down. It was a very nice office. He really never wanted to go home every night. Dave liked his work at lot better than home.

Doorways is sort of a whimsical, first person exploration game. It is more of a metaphor for a person’s crappy home life. It’s much nicer at work, not at home. Originally, I meant it to be a shooter, but sometimes, we can’t always get what we want. This was my very first foray into Unreal Engine and I have to say, I really learned a lot. The subtractive brushes, terrain hole tool, and having some awesome assets from the Infinity Blade games to work with were amazing! I have to admit though, that this project was very much over-scoped. I had planned to make a shooter with enemy AI and a companion animal to help distract those enemies and some additional wind zone obstacles as well. However, even with Blueprints and some helpful behavior tree tutorials, building the AI from the ground up still took me a while so it became a simpler exploration game instead. I have to admit, after playing the Stanley Parable, I was not displeased with the more player driven desire to explore and a lack of violence. Though, the warbear enemies are still pretty scary.

For this design, I really focused on make a “Wow” moment for the player. I wanted to create a really great view that, especially at the final slower pace, can be much more appreciated. I’m also a pen and paper fan, so here are my sketches.