First Person Stealth Horror Experience

A.O.S Escape Mission

This project is focusing on level designing a tight first person horror experience with a 3 act structure. The level also focuses on level designing areas where stealthing is the cornerstone.

Introduction

Specifications

Developed in 4 weeks half-time
Made in Unreal Engine 5
Made using a pre-made 1st Person template.
Inspired by Alien: Isolation.
All meshes are made by me.

Overview

This project is inspired by Alien: Isolation and it's core gameplay loop. The level takes place on an abandoned space station where there is an alien hungry for the player.

The focus lies in making a tight linear stealth experience and spiking fear in the player with the help of level design.

Process

References and inspiration

This project started with me finding reference images and inspiration of how an abandoned spaceship looked and felt like. Alot of my inspiration came from the Alien movies and Alien: Isolation. I went back to these references throughout the whole process to make sure I was giving the player the feeling I wanted them to experience.

Pre-Production

When I was done with finding references and inspiration I had the refrences in mind while sketching napkin designs. I was focusing on how I wanted the 3 acts to play out. The next thing to do was listing all mechanics I wanted the level to have so I could perpare and plan what scripting was needed to achieve my desired function.

Blockout

Immediately when I started the blockout I made a few meshes in order to build with the correct metrics from the beginning. The metrics of this level where super important since the goal was to make the player to feel cramped.

I placed all stealth covers early in the blockout to be able to iterate on them further in the later stages of the process.

Refined Blockout

After roughly blocking out the whole experience I started refining and added changes to the layout after I got feedback from playtesters. All the necessary scripts were finished after the refined blockout stage.

Whitebox

The whitebox state started when all major changes had been made. During the whitebox stage I switched out blocks with meshes I made myself. I focused alot on just tying the knot of this experience.

Gameplay

The Alien

The alien I am using will react to seeing and hearing the player, this will trigger the alien to charge at the player with intent to kill. I used this to my advantage as a level designer to make the player feel hunted and stressed in environments where the alien and player coexist. The player can also hear the aliens footsteps from a distance.

Vent Crawling

Vent crawling is used in this level for the player to progress through the level when there is no other way. The vents can also be used as a hiding spot to avoid the alien. The vents are safe from the alien in this level.

Stealth

Since I wanted to recreate Alien: Isolation's gameplay loop I made sure to make stealth gameplay a big part of this level. The player can hide behind boxes, under tables and in the vents to avoid the alien. Almost all covers are half covers, forcing the player to crouch.

Level Flow

This level follows a 3-act structure that teaches the player the core gameplay loop then tests them throughout the 3 acts. All acts have an exponential increase in difficulty as the player makes progress.

Act 1

The first act starts with the player seeing their crewmate dead, showing them that something is not right on the spaceship.

This acts main purpose is to teach the player the main mechanics and give them a taste on the gameplay loop in its easiest form. The act ends with the player seeing the alien for the first time from a safe place.

Act 2

Now that the player has been familiarized with the gameplay they get thrown in directly in the same room as the alien. Now the player has to use their explicit knowledge from the first act and avoid the alien at the same time.

This act also gives the player a long term goal; escaping. The player gets informed that they need to initiate the emergency protocol.

Act 3

The third act starts with the player initiating the emergency protocol. Which alters the environment. Now it is much darker and there is a beeping noise making the player unable to hear the aliens footsteps. This is testing the players explicit knowledge to the highest level.

The act ends with the player crouching through a vent and returning to a previous room that has been altered and escaping with the alien chasing the player.

Design Techniques

Covers

The usage of covers is frequent for the player in this level. There are half covers where the player has to crouch to hide from the alien. There are also full covers where the player can stand behind to hide without crouching.

The placement and design of the cover islands are carefully placed based on the aliens walkpath. The cover-placement take how the player will move and learn the aliens pattern into consideration.

Signifiers

This level uses colors as signifiers for doors and other entrences/exits. Green means that the door is unlocked and can be passed through. Red means that it is permanently locked. Yellow means that the player need to do something to open it. The actions the player needs to do can vary from finding a key to entering a specific code.

Level loop

The level features a level loop, where the player returns to a room they were in the beginning of the experience. The first time the player was in the room they had to stealth past the alien for the first time. Now that the player returns to the same room, they will feel cautious of their surroundings due to their past experience of the room.

The room the player returns to is slightliy altered due to the player initiating the emergency protocol.

Level Playthrough

Closing thoughts

A.O.S escape mission was so fun for me to design. I got to know myself more as a level designer when making this project. I realized how I felt comfortable designing a 1st person game which is something I didn't anticipate since I usually design 3rd person experiences.

If I hade more time I would extend the experience and make the acts longer. I would also like to polish the AI-behaviour of the Alien, making the alien more unpredictable. I also intended to make parts of the level where the alien would be able to go into vents with the player to stress the player even more.

I realized during this project that it is hard to design stealth-areas with only one threat or enemy to the player. It was a challenge but I enjoyed every second of it!