Possessed!
2 weeks
9 people
unreal 4
technical designer
Possessed! is a stealth game where you play as a ghost thief, stealing objects by possessing them and sneaking out the door.
Each object has its own unique movement to master while trying to go unnoticed by the wandering humans.
Designed and created in 2 weeks in Unreal Engine 4 as a 2nd-year school project.
Core Loop
- Pathfinding: find the possessable objects and familiarize yourself with the randomly generated level.
- Adaptive movement: each possessable piece of loot has its own movement to master! After possessing an object it is up to the player to use their mental map of the level to maneuver their way to the exit.
- Stealth: make sure not to be seen! if a patrolling human spots you it's game over
Gameplay showing various possessed objects and their movement and camera
Movement & Camera
Designing movement and camera metrics meant thinking about the game's pillars and what challenges we wanted the player to face.
All possessable objects reduce the player's agility which incentivizes the player to plan their path beforehand.
- lamp: very low speed challenges stealth: hard to escape humans
- basketball: slow acceleration and deceleration challenges intentionality: player can lose control very quickly
- racecar: wind-up and release challenges timing and precision
The lack of agility proved highly effective in building tension, while the diversity of each object offered replayability to the game.
Gameplay showing the ghost's movement and camera
Gameplay showing various possessed objects and their movement and camera
Metrics
Defining metrics for the player jump proved closely intertwined with props and level design.
To make pathfinding interesting I made sure the player could reach less heights once they possess a piece of loot, and also reward the player with shortcuts when parkouring from prop to prop.
I defined these metrics early in the process so that artists could match their assets to these metrics.
In the end, these metrics proved beneficial to aligning artists and designers on the team.
Visual of the jump and object metrics and how they relate to each other.
The props made by artists sorted by metrics.