Osakabe
Description
First-person horror experience set in a haunted Japanese castle. Run, hide and use your abilities to escape from Osakabe’s fierce grasp.
Explore your surroundings to find out about Osakabe’s past and use your limited tools to turn the tides in your favor. You may also find familiar faces along the way that guide your path, but only if Osakabe doesn’t find you first …
Project Details
Tech and Tools: UE4 / Blueprints
Development Time: 19.5 Working Weeks
Platforms Supported: PC / Windows
Available on: itch.io
Team Size: 20
My Role(s): Gameplay Programmer
My Contributions
Player Abilities & AI
One of my responsibilities during the concept stage of development was researching AI in stealth games and methods of setting it up for our game in Unreal Engine. I made this basic Guard AI prototype with Unreal’s built-in systems as a way of learning how to use them and find their limitations.
The other videos show the abilities I prototyped, based on the design documents. Art assets and UI are placeholders, but the functionality closely resembles what is in the final game. Only the hand cover ability didn’t make it, because the feature it was created for was cancelled due to scope issues.
HOrror Element
The prototypes you see in the videos here are all part of my research into horror games and creating tension through sound effects, lighting and jump scares.
JUMP SCARE WARNING!
Some of the concepts tested here were carried into the finished game, but unfortunately my jump scare traps didn’t make it.
Level Design Tools
I have worked on a series of events and puzzles that were supposed to be part of the levels to make the gameplay more diverse.
This video on the left shows the candle puzzle - an item is revealed when the player matches a certain sequence of lit and unlit candles on the walls. Everything is set up with a single blueprint that level designers can drag and drop into the scene and then specialize the desired trigger patters, candles involved and items spawned. Unfortunately this didn’t make it into the final game due to scope issues.
The series of videos bellow shows the development of the thunder strike jump scare event. I have first prototyped it in our test level, then made into a reusable blueprint (just like the candle puzzle) and then implemented it into the main level with proper lighting.