Mockery in the Black | Horror | Team of 9 students | Producer, UX and Level Designer | Unreal Engine | 2021-2022
Overview
Mockery in the Black is a horror game where the player wakes up in a Japanese garden and has to avoid the light in order to not attract a giant centipede. There are puzzles in the game that the player uses levers to deactivate overhead lights.
My contributions
I was the Producer of this game so I was responsible for looking out for deadlines and making sure we got our game submitted on time, as well as making sure everyone was staying healthy mentally and physically. I also created wireframes for the game and some of the art assets, including most of the particles. The third level in the game was designed and iterated upon by me.
Challenges we faced
We had no artists and assets were a difficult to find in the beginning without having to pay a good amount of money for them. In the end, we were able to find some good assets as well as I made some custom assets for our game. Since this was a 3D game, we ran into a lot of performance issues regarding some of the assets being too high-quality and dragging our framerate down. We hired a programmer halfway through the project to work specifically on optimizing the game and he did fantastic.
What I would change
I would scrap a lot of the art assets I made as they were not optimized well for our game and made our game difficult to play since it ran poorly. Getting someone who actually knows how to make models would be a huge boost to the overall quality of the game. Additionally, I would change the layouts of the levels to give some more moments of tension for the player as there were a lot of spaces that the player could easily avoid the monster completely and not interact with it.
This is the wireframe for the 2D version of the Main Menu.
2D version of the main menu
This is an image of the monster hiding in the shadows and scurrying across the player's path to set the tone of the game.
This is the wireframe for the 2D version of the Main Menu.
How I would move forward
If given more time, I would add back in an underground section that was cut about halfway through production as I thought it was an interesting space for the player to interact with. It was a very maze-like section that I think would've added some good tension for the player as it was a more closed off space that forced the player to interact more with the monster. I would also give more behaviors to the monster to make it feel a bit more real.