Somniphobia
Creative Director | Systems Designer | Narrative Designer
Overview
Roles: Designer (System, Narrative), Creative Director
Genre: Survival Horror, Rogue-Like
Engine: Unreal Engine (5.2)
Platform: PC
Team size: 10 (3 designers, 7 programmers)
Production length: ~8 months (September 2023 - April 2024)
Somniphobia is a survival horror game about a man trapped in a recurring nightmare. In order to escape, he must confront his fears and fight to the heart of the dream and stop it, before he wakes up and must repeat the cycle.
The game blends classic survival horror genre features like fixed camera angles and resource management with rogue like mechanics where Item and enemy spawning, enemy health, certain effects and events, and even the map layout are all partially randomized.
Somniphobia was made as an academic project at DigiPen Institute of Technology for the GAM300 and GAM350 classes.
What I did:
- Established the design pillars which were used to keep development focused.
- Designed the mechanics/systems including combat, movement, and camera system. Also wrote detailed and programmer friendly design documentation.
- Created narrative themes and a plot which were used to incorporate narrative into multiple aspects of the game.
Process
1. Pre-production
I spent much of this phase designing the base systems (mechanics, camera) by demonstrating them on paper and writing detailed design documentation.
Near the start of the project, I led a discussion to establish our design pillars so that we could keep on track and produce a cohesive experience.
3. Production
I worked closely with the programmers to design, implement, and tweak the combat system and enemies.
My implementation involved editing Unreal Blueprints to adjust values, adding a gun spread mechanic, and adding weighted enemy health randomization.
2. Prototyping
I helped prototype by keeping the documents updated, giving feedback to programmers, and editing values.
To ensure the game has a strong narrative core, I created central narrative themes.
These themes were used in the creation of, or at least were referenced in, the systems, levels, and more.
4. Polish
I did a number of tasks including creating two new rooms, partnering with another designer to create two cutscenes, and editing camera angels in many rooms.
I also spent time making additional tweaks to game values based on new playtest data.
Lessons Learned
The Importance of Design Pillars
Every change or addition proposed was checked against the pillars and was only added if it fit, this proved invaluable as it helped create a cohesive experience.
Early in combat design I had the idea to add a timed critical hit mechanic, I decided to scrap it when I realized that it went against the second pillar.
The document we printed and hung up.
3 minute video that gives an overview of the combat system and the work I put into it, including some specific examples
Tense and Fair Combat Design
I set about creating a combat system with the specific goals of making it tense and fair.
To make it tense I played into the resource management aspect, I designed a ranged weapon that uses ammo, and a melee weapon that was riskier and uses stamina.
To make it fair and to balance the lock on, I implemented gun spread and weighted enemy health randomization in Blueprints, I also spent time adjusting spawn rates.
Designing Rogue-Like Mechanics
I learned quite a bit about creating meta progression, rogue-like room design, and how to balance item and enemy spawn rates.
Whole level randomization became unrealistic, so we had a meeting to discuss ideas, we went with a style I proposed that limited generation but still made use of existing work.
The change in how level randomization worked proved to not only be a good lesson in rogue like map design, but also in scope management and teamwork.
A sketch I made to illustrate my “hub and spoke” idea. H=hub area. P=path end rooms. B=boss. Orange=randomly generated layout.
A top-down screen shot of a generated layout.
