Game Footage Recording and Music
I made a recording of “real machine test + music atmosphere verification” in the development stage to check whether the rhythm and mood of my current level are valid from the perspective of real play. I use Cine Camera in UE5 and complete a stable moving shot recording by adding Camera Rig Rail: on the one hand, it can show the perspective, light and dark changes and material details of the corridor space more clearly; on the other hand, it is also convenient for me to observe synchronously. Background music and ambient sound change at different distances and angles.
Compared with pure screenshots, this recording is more like a playable “experience test”, which allows me to review: which light sources/dark areas will be attracted by the player’s eyes, whether the fear is continuously stacked during movement, and whether the timing of music entering and disappearing will expose emotions prematurely or weaken the sense of unknown. In the future, I will continue to record the iteration of different versions in the same way as comparative evidence of the adjustment of the environmental atmosphere and the rhythm of the level.
Environment Design Process
Figure White-box Corridor: A basic level gray box used to verify spatial proportions, sightlines, and light-dark rhythm, first testing the sense of oppression and guiding direction
At first, I had a very intuitive understanding of the horror of this project: making the corridor black, dirty and oppressive, so that players would “see clearly” and be afraid. So, I started with the white model, first set up the proportion of space, the black area at the end, the corner and the line of sight, and wanted to verify that “the space itself can suppress the player”. But I soon found that if it was just dark, the player was more annoyed by “lost/can’t see clearly” than fear.
Figure：The final emotional version (compressed information/no endpoint)
Figure： UE5 Editor View — Overall Layout of Lighting and Decals in the Corridor Scene. I concentrated multiple sets of light sources and wall stain decals in the same perspective to quickly check the overall light and shadow rhythm, reflections/highlights, and the coverage of the worn texture in space
Figure： UE5 Editor View — Partial Iteration of the Corridor (White Model → Textured). While keeping the white model structure unchanged, I gradually added mold, cracks, and floor stain decals, and slightly adjusted the light positions and attenuation range, so that the environment can both guide the viewer’s sight and maintain an atmosphere of ‘unknown/oppression’
So, in the second stage, I changed the goal from “black” to “readable unknown”: players can feel what happened here, but they can’t confirm it, so they are forced to make up for it with imagination. So, I began to add a clearer light and dark rhythm, material narrative (peeling, moldy spots, wet traces), and partial whiteness in the finished product stage, so that the environmental information is dense, but the answer is not dead. At this stage, I realized that horror does not depend on “tying things”, but on “giving clues but not giving conclusions”.
Figure Level Structure Diagram: A Looping Exploration Route Unlocking Shortcuts Based on Evidence Thresholds
Later, this idea naturally involves the structure of the gameplay: if I want “atmosphere drive + player association”, then the player can’t be pushed in a straight line all the time, otherwise it’s like breaking through. So I changed the level to Gate → Reward → Loop: Open the door through key evidence and unlock a shortcut every time I open the door, allowing the player to return to the hub and re-select the route. In this way, the rhythm will become “explore – confirm – return to the safe point – go deeper”, and the fear is lengthened.
Figure Evidence Board: A tool for organizing clues and advancing reasoning
Finally, I made up a key question: the player’s stuck level will be boring. So, I changed the “tip” from the UI prompt to the evidence board: when the player gets lost, instead of giving the answer, let the evidence board show the obtained object/clue gap, forcing the player to reason and return to the space for verification. At this point, my mechanism and environment are closed – the environment is responsible for guiding and suggesting, and the evidence board is responsible for sorting and reasoning. The player’s fear comes from the association now when he strings up the clues.
The Process of Creating a Narrative
At the beginning of the project, in fact, I didn’t have good inspiration and ideas. After thinking about it for a long time, I suddenly flashed several horror decryption games that I had played with my classmates recently. I was impressed by the atmosphere of adrenaline soaring because of being chased by monsters and making my heartbeat faster by sudden noise, so I decided to make a horror first-person decryption game. Why not in the third person? Because the first-person perspective immersion will be stronger, and the player’s sense of immersion and attention will be more on the surrounding environment. But in my conception, fear does not come from the face monster, but from the environment itself – light, vocal lines, repeated spatial details, and the unknown sense of “you always feel that something is wrong ahead”.
Inspired by Escape the Backrooms (Pie on A Plate Productions, 2022), where repeating spaces and environmental details create tension and mystery.
Because I always think that it is the most real and impressive way to force players to associate fear in their minds through the environmental atmosphere. The way players advance is not purely solving puzzles, but collecting clues like investigation, assemble fragmented information into a “chain of evidence”, so that fear is based on understanding and association.
Narrative Foundation: Two-character
self-projection (Mother/Son)
In the design of the storyline, I designed two story characters, mother and son, without names and no more personal information descriptions. The concise and clear information release can help players understand the background of the story more quickly. Miraculously, these two-story characters are a projection of my personal experience and emotions.
In the story, the role of “son” is me when I was young. At that time, my parents were busy with work. I went to boarding school at the age of six, leaving my parents’ company and facing this strange world alone. I don’t want to stay with my parents, and I don’t want to grow up with my parents. For me at that age, “being seen” and “being accompanied” are the most important things – even if it is just a simple response, a hug, and a patient listening.
My experience when my stocks soared/ My experience of my stocks plummeting overnight
And “mother” is who I am now (or the extreme me two months ago). I focused all my attention on the screen of the constantly beating numbers, indulged in the excitement brought by the ups and downs, and indulged in the fantasy of “adding a little more can turn over”. My world has been reduced to a curve: excitement when it rises, madness when it falls, and emotions fluctuating like a roller coaster. In order to make up for the loss and prove that she was not wrong, the mother in the story kept increasing her chips, even using “life” as a chip – because she believes that as long as she bets harder, she will definitely get the desired result, even if the result can no longer really return to the past.
So what I want to do is not a traditional “mother and son” family story, but to let two “me” in different states meet in the same space: one is “the young me who just wants to be accompanied”, and the other is “the present me who just wants to make up for everything with chips”. What’s more ironic is that their needs are just the opposite – what the son wants is to stop, return to reality, and someone really cares about him; what the mother wants is to continue to bet, continue to chase, and make up for what has been lost in a more intense way. It is also because of this that their conflicts are not driven by dialogue and quarrels, but gradually appear through the environment and clues: the deeper the player goes, the more they will find that this tragedy is not “who doesn’t love whom enough”, but “a person is too persistent in remediation, but missing the most important thing”.
I hope the core of the player’s final understanding is that there are many things that can be made up for to satisfy the desire, but once there are some things in life that are missed, the more they make up, the more like self-deception. The mother regards the resurrection as a “rebound” and the sacrifice as a “plus warehouse”, while the son is like the neglected self, reminding her again that what really needs to be saved is not the result, but the emotions and relationships that have been abandoned for a long time. By embodying myself in two stages into two characters, I put my contradictions on the table – so that players can see in exploration and reasoning: fear does not come from monsters, but from “I know I missed it, but I’m still pretending to make up for everything”.
Game Mechanics Creation
At first, I was actually debating whether to do the “checkpoint/rebirth point”, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it would turn the exploratory horror into a breakthrough rhythm: the player’s attention would become “where to resurrect after death”, not “I gradually read space and clues in this manor”.
Map Partitioning and Loop Mechanism Design
So, I changed the core structure to “Loop + Shortcut”, emphasizing that it is a level structure and rhythm strategy, not a resurrection mechanism: Loop means that after players advance a section of exploration, they can return to the familiar central area (such as the hall/main corridor) through another channel.
Closed loop: the shortcut is to open a shorter return path or a new connection channel after meeting the conditions (key evidence/trigger event/access control unlock) to make the retreat more efficient and reshape the next exploration rhythm. In this way, the rhythm of the manor will become “propulse – pause – return to the main road – re- advance”, which not only avoids the fatigue of walking linearly to the end, but also allows players to gradually gain a sense of spatial control: the more explored the route, the more “passable”, and the structure is more like the real manor.
Specifically in the level, I set the Main Hall as the center. Players enter the west wing (kitchen/Strom) from the hall to explore, unlock the side door after getting the key evidence, and then return to the hall faster through the side door – this “unlock and return to the center” action is the loop, which not only saves the original way back, but also Give me a very clear rhythm to arrange the “pacing beat” and environmental changes.