MAIN DEVELOPER
ABOUT
Description
A girl is trapped inside her school after leaving for the restroom. The halls are quiet, and the atmosphere is tense. She wanders the halls searching for an exit, only to find a Lovecraftian horror roaming.
“IT” is what she calls it.
Run from It or “IT” will find you.
Genre
3D Stealth - Horror
Year
2022
Developer
Team CaytVi
(Solo project)
Role Description
Conceptualized the game, wrote its Game Design Document, designed all of the game mechanics, designed the main level layout, populated it using free assets, and coded the level scripting and the AI for the main Monster enemy.
Also, enlisted the help of an artist, an SFX artist, and a music composer to add to the game’s atmosphere and create the logo, music, sound effects, and the “IT” monster’s model itself.
GALLERY
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Player character & monster
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Hallway with main character
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More of Level and “IT”enemy
METHODOLOGY
It Hides, It Seeks was completed in the span of two months using Unreal Engine. It was a solo project and was also my capstone project for my degree in Game Development. I wanted to take the ideas that I worked on in HEIST and expand them using a more unique setting. Recently, at the time, I had played Gylt by Tequila Works and was inspired to create a game using a school as its main setting. In the planning stages, the game was going to feature 4 levels and only 1 patrol. However, this patrol would be a super entity that had mechanics that hunted down the player.
I had to program, manage outsourcing for assets, and building the level. I heavily underestimated how much time it would take me to do everything, so I eventually, I just decided to do 1 level since I was strapped for time. I started by making a map in the same grid program. I knew I wanted to use keys and I wanted to incorporate classrooms into the level. I designated 4 areas: The teacher’s lounge, a ruined classroom, vent system, a regular classroom, the art classroom, and the janitor’s closet. I had the main monster, “IT”, patrol the hallways making these areas the only safe spots from him.
I started the level off by guiding the player through a big hallway before stopping them near a section of tilted over lockers, where “IT” would pass by and force the player to take to the nearby air ducts, coming out in one of the classrooms. The player then would weave the halls in search of a key to open the exit gate at the end. The player would be tasked with getting the key in the Teacher’s Lounge to open the art class and find another key which would open the janitor’s closet with the Exit key. In hindsight, I would make it so all 3 keys can be gotten in any order to allow more player freedom. When I started my blockout, I put the grid Image I got from the program and overlayed it on the floor to give me some reference on where to place blocks.
Once the blockout was finished, I started to get to work on the rest of the level, populating it with props that would be found in a school. Desks, locker, and more while making sure they wouldn’t collide with “IT” and his patrol path. The lighting was also turned moody to enhance the atmosphere and all lighting is strictly placed on the ceiling to mimic fluorescent lights in a school highway. The end product resulted in this:
Overall, I would definitely make it more interconnected and just make it a bit bigger to get lost in. The level itself is just too small and everything can be found very easily. A lot of the ideas that I had for the level had to be scrapped simply because I couldn’t get the mechanics to work in time on the gameplay end, but if given more time and knowledge, the level would have featured a lot more props and a more winding hallway design that allows better points for the player to hide from “IT” and get lost in.
