2024
Creator
Unreal Engine 5
First person, Deduction, World Building
OVERVIEW
THE REDLINE is a 15-20 minute long puzzler built around the concept of finding a mysterious stranger at a nightclub, before they find you.
After an initial opening scene to onboard the games core mechanics and setup the basic story concepts the player is left to explore the open level space of a local nightclub, where they must use logical deduction and intuition to question their target over a radio and narrow down which of the dozens of guests at the club is their target, all the while fighting against time as your target attempts to do the same to you.
Being my flagship university project, I wanted The Redline to serve as an opportunity to reinforce design philosophies I’d already learned, whilst branching out into new areas to explore different techniques (Environmental storytelling, FPS mechanics, open level design).
It was developed in my final year of university over the course of 12 weeks using Unreal Engine 5, and was designed with the intention of exploring the link that exists between narrative and worldbuilding in videogames, with a focus on writing, environmental storytelling, and Level Design.
Broadly speaking this project shares a lot of DNA with one of my previous releases ‘SILVER FALLS’ in regards to general theming and aspects like design philosophies and pacing. I did this with the goal of building a strong foundation that could then be built off to explore new areas of design such as expanded level design and more involved player interaction.
Development Contributions
The rest of this page goes over the various features I contributed to this project, for a more detailed look, including documentation of my process and design goals, please look at my associated game design document here
Level Design & Building:
Create the level concepts and story
Design and build all level geometry, including locale appropriate textures, decals, etc…
Grey box and built out all of the games levels, including iteration from recieved feedback
Light levels using baked and dynamic lights
Decorate levels with various props, decals, personal markers to develop environmental storytelling
Choose and trigger appropriate music & sound effects to influence player emotion and build atmosphere
Gameplay & Mechanics:
Implementation of first person player controller including movement, interaction, and gunplay with a revolver pickup.
An interactive dialogue system, allowing the player to pick from multiple dialogue options while continuing in gameplay, complete with branching dialogue.
NPC interaction system, allowing the player to talk to nearby NPC for small dialogue snippets.
‘Inner thoughts’ system which allows the player to interact with different object to receive some insight into the protagonists mind.
Story and Dialogue:
Write all of the games dialogue and flavour text
Trigger scripted events/sound cues for various story beats
Notable Moments:
Opening scene that drops the player in the middle of a tense situation where they must follow the orders of a mysterious voice to complete their task.
Several small pieces of environmental storytelling such as gunshots and sirens which can be heard in the distance and a golden city which towers over the run downs slum in which the game is set.
Epilogue set in a moment frozen in time, where the player must confront a mysterious assailant to discover the truth of their situation
Scripting:
Scripting large amounts of the games content, including NPC interactions, scripted events, player controller, post processing, etc…
Playtesting & Iteration:
Conducted various playtests with people who were both experienced and inexperienced with first person puzzle games.
Bug fixing and iterating on core systems like dialogue & narrative based on recieved feedback
