Balaam Manor
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School project at Futuregames
First person mystery game
Level designer & Project manager
9 developers (3 designers, 3 artists & 3 programmers)
Unreal Engine 4, Github, Miro, Discord
4 weeks
Sept 2020
Contributions
Level design
Game design
Project management
Start menu design & implementation
Description
You are guilty of greed. Refusing to pay the devil what you owe, Mammon the demon of greed has sent you to Balaam Manor. You broke an oath and must take the punishment.
Balaam Manor is set in an 1890’s Victorian Manor. The game takes place in a few of the manor’s rooms where the player has to solve different puzzles. Through a first person perspective the player can pick things up, inspect them and place them in order to solve puzzles.
Level design goals
To get the mood right in the game, the environment needed to be as authentic and believable as possible.
It is important to guide the player, but the player should not feel guided.
Short and sweet gameplay.
Game loop
Research
First I had to do some research on late 1800’s Victorian houses, to use as reference for my sketches and block out.
To understand what a Victorian manor looked like and how it was constructed is necessary in making a authentic and believable environment.
Late 1800’s Victorian house.
Late 1800’s blueprint of a Victorian house.
Sketches
These are the final sketches I made of the house. As you can see I drew all the rooms of the house including the bathrooms. Most of them will not be playable but they are important to get the history and feeling of the manor correct.
Block out
This is the final version of the block out. During this process I nailed down the height and width of the doors, walls and ceiling etc.
Working with a first person perspective, I realized that I could not use real measurements due to this giving a cramped feeling.
I had to increase all the measurements for the feeling to be right.
Flow
To meet the short and sweet goal we decided to have four small puzzles, each located in different rooms.
The game takes place in the office, dining room, main hall and living room.
When you complete a puzzle it opens the door to the next room and when you enter that room, the door to the previous one closes.
The haunted house setting allowed us to have self-opening and -closing doors.
This mechanism only lets the player interact with one puzzle at a time; reducing the risk of confusion and thereby saving time.
Rooms
With only four weeks to complete this project, we chose to let the game take places in rooms which were similar to one another. This made time for the artists to make the high quality assets we needed. Similar rooms allows for reuse of assets, making time to focus on quality rather than quantity.
I used simple lines and lights to guide the player in where to go and understanding what was important.
Office
This is the room the player starts in and here we introduce that the player can pick things up and place them with a simple puzzle. The player has to find three framed art pieces and put them on the wall in the right place.
The candles create an upwards motion for the eyes and the lamps frame the area of importance.
From a different angle.
The lamps tell the player that the door is important.
Main hall
The main hall has a couple of functions; it is the gateway between the other rooms. When the player leaves the first room (the office), they enter the main hall and theories about setting and what kind of house it is can here be confirmed. The last puzzle is set in the main hall.
The lamps to the left and the fireplace will lead the player to the left. Note that the lamps on the right are broken.
I created a flow to the left with light and asset placement to guide the player.
Living room
Hoof marks on the floor, (part of the environmental storytelling) leading to the piano and candles are used to guide the player.
Dining hall
Lights and candles are used to mark areas of importance.
Teamwork
Early on we talked about, and nailed down some core values. This created a very open, respectful and humble working environment where everyone’s ideas and thoughts where heard, and taken in consideration. I think this was key to the success with this project.
I worked very close with the artists through out the whole project, nailing down the scales and the feeling for the different rooms we made together.
The function for every room, and the different puzzles, where mainly designed by William, Jack and I. However, the piano puzzle came from one of the programmers; Leon.
During playtesting, William and I had to scrap one of the more complex puzzles made by Alkimni, one of the programmers. It had too many design problems which we could fix, but it would be very time consuming and felt like a gamble. It was a hard decision, because scrapping someone’s work is never fun.
It was a very pleasant experience to work with everyone in this team, while writing this I miss that time.
Check out their portfolios and art-stations!
Artists
Katarina Persson
Rebecka Näsberg
Andreja Cordeus Kavcic
Game designers
William Dahlberg
Jack Korkis
Programmers
Alkimini Stathi
Leon Andersson
Matthew Garcés