Last Survivor

During my second year 'Indie Games Development' module, I was tasked with creating a horror game in the style of a game from the PSX era. This meant that the gameplay and visuals were to be simplistic to emulate games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

To accomplish the visual style, I opted for a simple but effective shader which - when placed overtop of the game - completely transforms the look of the game to the point it could be mistaken for a true game of the era.

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During the project, I was also required to keep a developer log which detailed the progress for the project at key stages (found here). Within this blog, I wrote down an introduction to a potential narrative/backstory for the game, which is something I had not done up until this point. The story was simple and inspired heavily by other games such as 'Resident Evil' and 'Alien: Isolation'.

This was my first proper game made with Unreal and blueprints, as well as the first time I worked with both AI and general cinematography. As such, there are a couple of issues I had to overcome with both of these elements. The AI for the 'creatures' that serve as the enemies within the demo was planned to be a lot smarter and more fleshed out, including having the ability to chase the player down and slash at them. Around the halfway point of the project however, I realised I didn't possess enough knowledge or time to pull of exactly what I wanted to at the time. I instead cut down the AI to be a simple movement and detection pattern. If the player entered the vision cone for the creature, it would kill the player instantly and they would be put back to the beginning or a checkpoint. This type of detection is similar to the Xenomorph's behaviour in 'Alien: Isolation' which allows no real escape if you're seen up close.

This project is the most complex I have worked on during university and feels the most complete as a result. Since it has a story, cutscenes, a proper gameplay loop, AI controlled enemies and 2 objectives along with proper tutorialisation. As such, it's one of the projects I am the most proud of so far.