Light in the Darkness - Overview 

Light in the Darkness is a short atmospheric horror game in which a child lost in a dark forest must collect light while being pursued by a menacing figure. This game was created as my final year project, developed solo using Unreal Engine 5.2.

Level design - Mapping & In-engine view

Area 1: The beginning

  • Player starts seeing controls on the floor an a single light in the distance
  • When light is approached and interacted (E), light will go out and light further down will turn on
  • This carries on until the end to cut to a cut scene; introducing the enemy
  • Orange grass is introduced in small batches between lights

Area 2: The chase

  • Player camera switches to the front of the player, causing distress and visualizing enemy
  • Enemy chases player across field
  • Players must avoid orange grass to have enough time to reach the end of the field

Area 3: The forest

  • Red: Enemy
  • Blue: Mushrooms/mushroom base
  • Yellow: Chase puzzle path
  • Green: Flower puzzle trees
  • Purple: Player start

Reflection notes

All levels are meant to connect to eachother narratively speaking, in which only the 3rd level allows players full freedom to explore. Levels 1 and 2 are more linear for introducing controls and concept to the player without breaking inmersion

Puzzles designs

Chase light Puzzle:

Mushroom Puzzle:

Flower Puzzle:

Reflection notes

Chase puzzle: 

This puzzle had a purpose to provide a more visual element to the forest, like seeing a deer in the woods. So it a similar regard, I wanted the light to run away when player got closer. I think if I were to go back on this I would like to make the movement of the light more whimsical and add more randomness to it to add a bit more of a challenge

 

Mushroom puzzle:

This puzzle greatly added to the exploration motivation as players had to look for all 3 mushrooms. Out of all the puzzles I believe this one fits the most with the theme of exploration of this game

 

Flower puzzle:

One of the more simple puzzles, as long as players knew a life cycle of a flower the puzzle should be intuitive enough to decipher

System work examples - Diagrams

Player mechanics

  • Player moves around using WASD, which also moves the camera fixed on the back of the player
  • When holding shift, players sprint for faster movement
  • Players interact with E
  • When collecting light orbs, player body begins to "fill with light"

Enemy behavior

  • Enemy wanders aimlessly between randomly generated points on the map
  • Enemy field of view (FOV) visualized using an orange light
  • FOV cannot go through objects; such as trees
  • If player enters FOV, enemy will begin chasing player
  • If player collides with enemy, player dies and the level is reset
  • The more lights collected by player, the more enemy FOV increases in range

Grass

  • Orange grass found in level 1 and 2 will 
  • Will slow player down if walked on
  • Gray grass found in level 3
  • Will glow if stepped on by player
  • Will glow in on points of interest such as puzzles

Reflection notes

Player:

Meant to represent an empty husk, that by collecting lights scattered around the map, can the player return life to the darkenned forest. Controls were kept simple as well as single handed to allow better acessibility. 

Enemy:

The model and animation for the figure were made by myself, which helped keep the original idea of the character. The system is a simple ai chase behaviour, that only in the end does the figure always chase the player until the end. This is because the player has accumulated so mush light that the player is visible through the darkness

Grass:

One of the first concept idea for the game, I wanted to use plants in different ways to add to the forest world magic. Originally I wanted players to be able to draw on a grass field with the light, but due to time constraints the grass was used as a challenge factor in the first 2 levels, and then as a world guide for player to more easily find the puzzles on the map