Project Description
My role: Technical Designer (game design and scripting)
Engine : Unreal Engine 5 using Blueprints
Team size: Started with 5 people, ended with 13.
Project duration : 8 weeks
Wick of Despair started as one amongst eleven end of course projects, with an initial team of 5 people. Every few weeks, some projects were cut and the disbanded teams' members integrated the remaining teams.
Before being cut in the finals, Wick of Despair had a team of 13 people, with a total development time of 8 weeks.
Wick of Despair is a survival horror game where the player has to find their way out of a derelict underground laboratory built inside a bunker. With their lighter in hand as their only source of safety, the player has to traverse a fearsome environment where used-to-be-humans affected by a strange form of corruption still roam the hallways.
The distinct features of Wick of Despair include its lighter mechanic that mimics how a real life lighter must be ignited using a mouse wheel , as well as an corruption mechanic that increases the hostility of the environments, causes illusions to disorient the player and gives a sense of lost of control.
My Role(s)
Main role: Technical Designer (game design and scripting)
During the first weeks, I collaborated in designing the different features of the game in a way that will give us, the developers, the most tools to create a truly horrific experience through a fear of danger and the unknown as well as a sense of lack of control, to tune to perfection.
After that, I was in charge of scripting most of what was directly tied to the character controller, using Unreal Engine's Blueprints. More precisely, I was in charge of the following elements :
• The lighter and the system that drives away enemies from fire sources;
• The corruption system that grows on the player overtime when away from fire sources;
• The character controller itself;
• A door system that allows the player to open and close using the movement of the mouse;
• A rework of enemy AIs to make them more reactive and dangerous.
Designing the game
After the initial brainstorm leading the team toward the making of a horror game with a vague idea of what we wanted to make of it, a crucial step was to list down all the ways we wanted to induce fear into our players:
• A sense of unknown — Not only the player would be prisoner of a mostly pitch-black environment where they would only see a few meters in from of them, we decided to place various environmental sound effects as well as hand-crafted events that would give the sense of an ever more horrifying something was present inside the cold tunnels of the underground facility.
• A loss of control — We didn't want the player to become comfortable and get a sense of control over the game and its dangers. For that, we made the lighter somewhat unreliable. The more corrupted the player is, the higher are the chances the lighter could suddenly be put out, and the chances to successfully light the flame by turning the flint wheel would decrease. We addtionally added events, both random and hand placed, that temporarily deprive the player from the safety of their lighter. One such event caused the player to hear a mouth blow that puts out the lighter.
• A looming danger — I quickly brought up the need of a real threat for the player. Otherwise, we risked the player to realize the lack of danger and turn on an internal switch that would ultimately terminate any feeling of immersion and break the experience we wanted to share. One solution was to add two types of enemies. The first, present mostly in the earlier parts of the game and often in groups, slowly roams toward the player. The player has to squeeze through the group while repelling the closest enemies with their lit lighter to traverse the area containing these enemies. The other enemy type was a more aggressive one that actively runs after the player in the more open areas of the game, and was again afraid of the player's lighter.
Ultimately, the mix of these three main "categories" of fear was what made Wick of Despair terrifying, and each mechanic and system was designed around these categories.
Scripting the game
Using Unreal Engine's blueprints, I was in charge of prototyping and scripting a few features. The most notable features being :
• Lighter — Since the idea of using the mousewheel to light the lighter, it is the first thing I prototyped. One goal was to translate the feel of a lighter's flint wheel onto a mousewheel. Scrolling the wheel a few notches and fast enough would count as one "try" to light the flame. It was also required to hold the right click of the mouse as it represented the ignition button/the opening of the lid. Each "try" had a chance to light the lighter succesfully, and each fail would increase the chance of success of the next tries. With that system, it was possible to make adjustments to the reliability of the lighter while preventing totally chaotic behavior that could result in the player not being to light the lighter in an urgent game scenario.
• Light detection system — For our game, it was also important to know if each character (player or enemies) is within a light source that can protect from corruption. These light sources must prevent the player's corruption from raising and repel the enemies. I decided to give a unique tag to each of these light sources, and register them into a list at runtime. The goal was to allow the level designers and non-programmers to quickly change any light in the game into a safe zone if they wanted. A the bulk of the feature was made into an ActorComponent that could be attached onto anything we wanted to interact with these lights, with a simple boolean that is made accessible from other blueprints to know whether or not the object was exposed to the light source. To further simplify the usage of these lights, a simple tool was made that let the developpers simply check a checkbox to make a normal light into a special light source.
Video Showcase
To the right is a video showcase the game final version of the game before the project was discontinued.
The camera is here to show the scrolling action necessary to light the lighter. Thanks to Roman Cros for the footage.
